


The Family Jewels

by comeaftermejackrobinson



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Anxiety, Character Analysis, Character Study, Depression, Dry Humping, F/M, Family Issues, Mutual Masturbation, Near Death Experiences, Post-Season/Series 02, Recreational Drug Use, Season 3 AU, Self-Esteem Issues, Sex, Tahani-centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2019-07-21 01:53:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 56,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16150073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/comeaftermejackrobinson/pseuds/comeaftermejackrobinson
Summary: Following the sound of his voice and with her eyes no longer clouded by tears, Tahani looked up and saw him for the first time. A boyish face, eyes expressive like a child's, she reminded him of someone. The brush of his skin against hers reminded her of something, but she couldn't have put her finger on what that was. All she knew was that she felt calmer, safer. Less sad.Or a different version of how Tahani Al-Jamil and Jason Mendoza met and fell in love with each other.





	1. Chapter 1

 

 _'cause it's my problem_  
_if I want to pack up and run away_  
_it's my business if I feel the need to_  
_smoke and drink and swear_  
_it's my problem, it's my problem_  
_if I feel the need to hide_  
_and it's my problem if I have no friends_  
_and feel I want to die_

**marina and the diamonds, “are you satisfied”**

 

 

 

She sat on the sidewalk and hugged her knees to her chest. She caught her own reflection on the well-lit window of a shop across the street, right under the sign that read ‘CLOSED’. The waitress uniform she had stolen looked too big on her. It made her feel small. Insignificant. Alone in a foreign country, with her hair (all disheveled now) cascading over her shoulders and her brown eyes puffy from all the crying, Tahani Al-Jamil was the picture of patheticism.

 

A wave of nausea washed over her. She was so ashamed of her behaviour. Turning up uninvited, causing a scene and drawing attention to herself for all the wrong reasons. What did this say about her life? In her almost thirty years of existence, she had never felt uglier or sadder. What was worse, she could no longer hide from the truth: she was unloved. None of the people she hung out with really counted as friends, and the only family she had left despised her because that was the example their parents had set.

 

Tahani _almost_ wished she had died earlier that night.

 

The moment kept coming back to her in violent flashes. Every time she closed her eyes, she was back there, tugging at the rope, muttering nonsense phrases like a mad woman, willing her sister’s statue to come down where no one but Tahani thought it belonged. It wasn't hard to imagine what would have happened if it hadn't been for the grey-haired stranger that had pushed her out of harm’s way.

 

She couldn't help but picture it, a funeral as beautiful and elegant as her godmother's had been, a roomful of people offering their most sincere condolences to a stoic Kamilah, newspapers and magazines later commenting on how brave, how strong the young prodigy always was in the face of tragedy, what was supposed to be a celebration of Tahani’s life turned by the media into yet one more opportunity for Kamilah to steal the spotlight. Even in the wake of her own death, she would have continued to be an afterthought for the rest of the world. Second best. The unloved, uncared for and unwanted child of parents that, had they been alive and had the stranger not succeeded in saving Tahani, wouldn't have grieved for her. They would have cried, yes, but only out of worry that her precious, sensible, now only daughter was under too much stress, her party ruined by her useless, good for nothing sister.

 

It all made so much sense in her head, all those _what ifs_ … It was revolting that she found relief in her parents being dead, she knew as much. But the idea that they wouldn't have mourned the loss of a child ( _her_ loss) was enough to make her wonder if sudden, violent death wouldn't have been preferable to what lay ahead of her now: days like the ones she'd lived through before, only that now she was completely aware of how empty, how meaningless each and every one of them were, not unlike her.

 

It was pointless, dwelling on it. Self-destructive, even. Thirty years of unhappiness were too heavy a weight for anyone to carry, and yet it seemed that she had just been doing that until earlier that night. But now, no longer blind nor blissfully ignorant like she'd been before, Tahani could feel every ounce of pain and see through all the lies she'd been telling both to herself and others.

 

She was a fraud.

 

She didn't understand how some considered truth freeing. She felt trapped, an unsuccessful, miserable girl caged in the body of a woman devoted to pretending to be the cat who got the cream. What for, she wondered.

 

What for.

 

_It was all for nothing, dear. You are worthless, and so is your life._

 

But there was nothing she could do about it, was there? Even if she wanted to break the circle, the circle wouldn't break. _An old dog can't learn new tricks, Tahani._ It was too late to do anything about her unhappiness, too late to change the things that made her terribly miserable. Therapy would imply talking about things, about _herself._ Ironic as it may have seemed to some, the idea made her panic. Yes, Tahani loved talking, and yes, most of the time she talked about herself, but everything that came out of her mouth were carefully rehearsed sentences, all part of an elaborate plan to show her life under a certain light, in a certain way, and to certain people. She could fool other billionaires, philanthropists and celebrities -- it was easy, they didn't care about her any more than her parents had, why would they look for signs that something was wrong? Why would they waste a second of their valuable time on something other than writing generous checks so the world could see how much they cared about changing the world through handing over money from the comfort of the ballrooms and galas they navigated so well? A therapist would actually pay attention to her. They would _care,_ even if only in the way a health professional does for a patient. And that, she knew, would _undo_ her. She couldn't see how therapy would help at this point if the mere thought of having the undivided attention of a fellow human being during a 50 minute session that she'd be paying for was already making her chest heavy with what was undoubtedly profound anguish.

 

No, therapy was out of the question. The only thing she believed could help her, and she felt embarrassed of how much she wished this was possible, was a time machine. It was ridiculous, childish even, to want something so much you don't care it doesn't exist outside of fairy tales where all-knowing, almighty, magical beings pop up out of old lamps and offer to grant you wishes. What was even more pathetic was that she knew what three things she would ask for, had known for years. There were the same three things she had prayed for every night since she could remember.  

 

_I wish someone loved me. Someone that would make my dull heart light up with joy._

 

_I wish I had someone kind and nice that cared for me, someone to hold me when I'm upset and scared._

 

_I wish someone patient and good saw how sad and unsatisfied I am all the time, how broken I'm inside, so they could help me._

 

As a supposedly accomplished, successful adult, her biggest, deepest hopes and dreams still were linked to unresolved traumas from her loveless childhood and fairy tale-like fantasies about magical beings granting her a do-over of her pathetic, lonely life. Too emotionally unstable, the thought of seeking help from someone trained to deal with complex human emotions was terrifying, perhaps even more so than all the other realizations she had come to in the last hour. That's how fucked up Tahani Al-Jamil was.

 

What she had to do now was rather simple, she supposed. She'd have to put this night behind her, bury it in some forgotten, forsaken corner of her mind, hidden in the dark where she didn't have to see it all the time. And some day soon she'd forget it was there. If she tried hard enough and threw herself into this pretending game of hers, surely the numbness, the blindness, would come back soon. And perhaps one day she would even believe her own lies again.

 

Yes, fucked up indeed.

 

The minutes ticked by and Tahani didn't move from where she sat. She should probably go back to her hotel room, take a shower, maybe even lie some more and convince herself she'd be able to sleep for a couple of hours. Her flight didn't leave until the following evening, she could have a duvet day -- God knew she hadn't indulged like that in ages. The intelligent thing to do would be booking herself a spa day, of course, make sure she looked her best for the relief mission. There would be a lot of photographers there, and her pores were in no state to be photographed, not even a harmless, fun selfie taken with an iPhone. So she had to do something about that, she couldn't waste time throwing herself a pity party.  

Yes, she'd do that, she thought, she'd go to her hotel room, take a shower, go to bed, and then first thing in the morning she'd go down to the spa. She was perfectly capable of doing those things, and in less than 24 hours she would be too preoccupied with pretending to be happy and fulfilled so no one would find out she actually wasn't that she'd forget all about how unhappy and unfulfilled she actually was.

 

But if she had a plan, and a brilliant one at that, why wasn't she feeling any better? Breathing was proving to be more and more difficult by the second, the pressure in her chest and head so terrible for a minute she dared hope something inside her would explode and she _would_ end up dying that night, alone in a dark street of a foreign country, disheveled and dressed as a waitress,  _in Cleveland._

 

It was the fact that the idea was so appealing what finally broke her. What began as hysterical sobs quickly turned into hyperventilation.

 

_Stop it. For fuck’s sake, Tahani, just stop it._

 

But she had no control of her emotions anymore, and neither could she keep her body from reacting to what she was feeling. She didn't know how to do that.

 

Tahani closed her eyes and buried her face between her knees, her hands pulling on her hair in an attempt to replace emotional distress with physical pain. It didn't work.

 

She'd had episodes like this one a couple of times during her childhood when feeling especially neglected. She hadn't associated them with that until much later, of course, and her _au pairs_ had treated them as tantrums at the time. They had become more frequent when she was in her adolescent years, studying abroad in France, overworked and overwhelmed by responsibilities all her efforts and achievements shadowed by Kamilah's. Tahani couldn't remember having an episode as an adult, thought long ago she'd outgrown this outrageous behaviour, managed to suppress these shameful reactions. She also couldn't remember her parents, or any living soul for that matter, knowing that she ever had them.

 

Escaping to a safe place inside her head had helped before. She'd recite them like a mantra, her three wishes, as if waiting some sort of metamorphosis: desperation turned into good fortune turned into the only things she truly wanted.

 

_I wish someone loved me. Someone that would make my dull heart light up with joy._

 

_I wish I had someone kind and nice that cared for me, someone to hold me when I'm upset and scared._

 

_I wish someone patient and good saw how sad and unsatisfied I am all the time, how broken I'm inside, so they could help me._

 

Tahani didn't hear him approaching, nor did she hear him the first time he asked if she was fine. Completely engulfed by her misery, she did not notice the young, handsome Filipino man that now sat by her side.

 

She would not know it for a long time, but Tahani Al-Jamil’s life was about to be saved by a complete stranger for the second time that night.

 

It was only on his third attempt at engaging her in conversation that he succeeded.

 

“Hey, doll. Are you OK?”

 

She should have felt mortified that another human being was present to witness her reaching her breaking point. She should have felt embarrassed, really, that the kindness of a stranger was making her crumble down, her crying worsening the more this person asked her if there was anything he could do to help her, and was she alright and did she want him to call the cops.

 

The more he talked, his American accent barely audible over her sobs, the more Tahani wanted a sinkhole to open up beneath her feet and swallow her whole, make her pathetic existence disappear from the face of Earth until she was nothing but a memory everyone that she'd ever had a passing acquaintance with would soon forget. If this was her reaction to some bloke being a decent human being and stopping to check on a woman having a nervous breakdown on the sidewalk, did this mean that she was right in believing that talking to a therapist would make matters worse? Or did this only prove that she should _really_ reconsider her decision to keep it all bottled up and consult a professional?

 

_No. It's my problem if I feel the need to hide. It's my problem if I am never happy. It's my problem if I have no friends. It's my problem if I feel I want to die._

 

She wished her brain would stop firing questions at her while she was in this state. She also wished this guy --however good his intentions were-- would go away so she could have some more time to cry in peace before getting the fuck up and going the fuck back to her fucking hotel room. And what the fuck was this bloke still doing there talking to her, could he not understand that she wanted to be left alone with her sadness?

 

_I wish someone patient and good saw how sad and unsatisfied I am all the time, how broken I'm inside, so they could help me._

 

But did she want to be helped? Or was she too comfortable pretending her average life was everything but that? Wasn't it easier, hiding away from it all, acting as if she was satisfied with everything she'd accomplished instead of voicing her frustration and depression? Were the hidden wishes she held so close to her heart nothing more than lies? Not ten minutes ago she'd been murmuring those words to herself, repeating them like a mad woman, and now _there was_ someone showing some concern, but there she was again, wanting to be left alone and pushing away the people that dared come close to the mess that she was, even if out of common decency and nothing else.

 

She would never be pleased with anything life gave her, she would always want the exact opposite of what she got, she would always be left wanting something else, something different, something bigger, better. Nothing would ever do for Tahani Al-Jamil.

 

The realization made her sob harder, louder. It also made the young man sitting next to her more concerned for her wellbeing, which only worsened things. After all, she had been made to believe by her family, the people that should have supposedly loved her and protected her, that she was unworthy of attention and affection. The idea was buried so deep within her now… How do you unlearn that?

 

_Fucked up, indeed._

 

Even though her face was covered in tears and sweat, her hair sticking to her neck and forehead, she was shivering. She couldn't breathe. Her stomach was in knots, her throat was closing up. For the third time that night, Tahani thought she would die there, in _Cleveland_ , dressed as a waitress, some random person that had nothing better to do than waste their time trying to help the helpless as the only witness. At least she wouldn't be alone, and it wouldn't be hours until someone walking their dog found her body. Dying of a panic attack had to be better, more dignifying than being crushed by a giant statue of her sister.

 

Then she felt it.

 

The stranger's hands, gentler and softer than any hands to ever touch her before, got her hair off her face, tucking big chunks of it behind her ears (which she hated, of course, because her ears were ugly -- there was a reason why she never did her hair up other than her not being a factory worker.) He then procured a tissue from somewhere inside the pockets of the bright yellow trousers he was wearing, and with the same gentleness and care he'd shown before he wiped her face clean of tears and sweat.

 

_And she let him._

 

She didn't fight him off, didn't scream at him to leave her the fuck alone. She didn't have the strength to do any of those things, didn't have the strength to resist the help of this mysterious Good Samaritan that was now having her drink from a bottle of water he carried in his backpack. She didn't have it in her to push away the only person _in years_ that was showing her some compassion, even if it absolutely _undid_ her. Tahani kept sobbing, and this stranger kept hushing her, whispering God knew what in his attempts to get her through the panic and the anxiety. She felt so tired all of a sudden, physically and emotionally, that she hardly cared he was now pressing the palm of his hand to her chest, warm and soft and calming.

 

_And she let him._

 

And it made her feel less scared. Less desperate. Less lonely.

 

Before she knew what was happening, her breathing was somewhat normal again. The crying had also stopped. All that was left was the emptiness, the heartache, the realization that life would go on after that night because she wasn't dead, she had been saved, she had survived, and the following day she'd have to keep on pretending.

 

All that was left was that, and the kind stranger sitting next to her, rhythmically breathing in and out with her until he was sure she wouldn't hyperventilate.

 

“Better?”

 

Following the sound of his voice and with her eyes no longer clouded by tears, Tahani looked up and saw him for the first time. A boyish face, eyes expressive like a child's, she reminded him of someone. The brush of his skin against hers reminded her of something, but she couldn't have put her finger on what that was. All she knew was that she felt calmer, safer. Less sad.

 

It didn't last long, though. She tensed and pulled away the moment she realized she was letting her guard down. “I'm fine, thanks.”

 

A lot calmer now, panic was losing to mortification and embarrassment at her current situation. With as much dignity as she could muster under the circumstances, she finally got back up on her feet.

 

The bloke in the bright yellow trousers and sports jacket did, too.

 

“I might be way off-base here, but you seem kind of bummed.”

 

Was he kidding her? He had just sat with her through a panic attack, cleaned her bloody face off tears and sweat and probably snot (how disgusting!)

 

Deciding to leave as soon as possible so as to not subject herself to further embarrassment, she tried to make matters seem a lot less important than they actually were. “I just had a terrible day, that's all.”

 

_I just have a terrible life._

 

_I’m so sad inside, so unsatisfied._

 

“Do you wanna talk about it? People say I'm a great listener.”

 

There was something sweet about him that she found terribly endearing. It was due to tiredness, she supposed, or the aftermath of a near death experience and a panic attack, one right after the other. She needed to be comforted and held so badly. Anyone would do, even a young American man dressed in ridiculous, bright yellow clothes. On any given day, a guy like him would be the last person on Earth she would talk to. And even then she would only talk to him because she just _loved_ talking. She could never be quiet, she didn’t understand how silent monks managed to keep their vows and suspected that they all had secret hiding places they went to when they felt like chatting.

 

“No, thank you,” she said, handing him back his now half-empty bottle of water. “I'm fine, really.” She was trying to sound as collected and polite as humanly possible, but Tahani knew that a part of her (a big part of her) was not done crying. She feared what might happen if she stayed there five more minutes.

 

She also feared what might happen if she walked away and went back to her hotel room like she’d originally intended before this guy appeared seemingly out of nowhere.

 

“OK, doll. I hope you feel better soon.”

 

He gathered his things and began to walk away. She did not move. Just before he got back into his car, something inside Tahani bursted and the thought she’d been afraid to voice escaped her without her permission.

 

“I almost died tonight.”

 

There. She’d said it. It was real now, even more so than it’d been an hour ago. She’d tasted the words, felt a shiver down her spine as she remembered the statue coming down, some unknown man pushing her out of harm’s way, everyone cheering afterwards because Kamilah had saved her, her sister taking all the praise and encouraging her fans in believing she was a hero when the truth was that she wouldn’t have wasted a single thought on Tahani had she died.

 

_Honestly? I don’t really think about you._

 

No one really did. No one ever had. Perhaps she wasn’t deserving of being on someone else’s thoughts. Maybe she was not worth anyone’s attention. But if that was true, then why was this guy sitting by her side once again, that look of concern that she found so adorable still on his face, _real_ pain for her situation shining in his dark, kind eyes?

 

“Sorry to hear that, doll.” His voice was honest and sweet, a balsam for her tattered soul. He had offered to listen if she wanted to talk about it. She knew now that she did, even if just this once, even if just to this one person that knew nothing about her and that she knew nothing about. What were the chances she’d ever cross paths with this man again? What were the chances she would explode and collapse on herself if she went back to the hotel with all of these feelings still inside her, festering and rotting in the pit of her stomach? The difference between one and the other was abysmal.

 

It wasn’t proper. He could be a thief or a murderer or someone dangerous for all she knew. They were alone in the middle of the night. It didn’t make any sense. And yet she wanted to talk to him, get it all out. And if she ended up crying again, so be it. She was a fucking human being, she was not some fucking robot. She’d rather explode right now than do it alone. She was terrified of the ideas she was getting, whispers in her ear. She did not want to listen to those voices while alone.

 

“I'm not,” she finally admitted, tears threatening to come again. “I'm not sorry. That's the problem. I wish it had happened. I wish I had died. I cannot shake that feeling off.”

 

“That's why you were crying.”

 

 _No shit Sherlock._ She’d have to text Martin Freeman about this conversation. She’d leave some details out, of course. She’d leave all of the details out, actually, and just tell him the _No shit Sherlock_ bit, context and situation slightly changed to her own advantage. She did not need dear good Martin knowing about this whole fiasco. What if he texted dear good Amanda about it? (Were they still talking? Not important).

 

She focused her attention back on the man by her side.

 

“I had a NDE a couple of months ago, you know?” _What are the odds?_ “Near death experience. Some people say you have to flatline to call it that, and I didn't. But it still was a pretty close call. I did something stupid that I shouldn't have done. It could have gotten me killed. After that, my life changed completely. Do you mind if I smoke?” He said all of that really fast, a cigarette and a lighter already in his hands. He didn’t light it until she answered his question, though, which Tahani found very sweet.

 

“No, I don’t mind. Be my guest.”

 

She had never tried a cigarette. Her parents had always told her smoking was unladylike, a frowned upon habit. A woman should never fall for such a disgusting vice, they’d always said. The narrative changed when Kamilah was photographed smoking after one of her shows, of course. The press was comparing her to Audrey Hepburn in _Breakfast at Tiffany’s._ Her parents were delighted. They had also made it very clear to Tahani that it wasn’t in her best interests to take up smoking: it was an aesthetic that only worked well for elegant, upper class women. She was not one. She would never be able to pull it off the way Kamilah did. Fucking double standards. That was what she heard from her parents every time she wanted to do something: _You will never be as good as Kamilah is at this, don’t you waste your time trying and embarrassing us with how un-Kamilah you turned out ot be._ How much was she missing, how many mistakes was she not making and learning from simply because she could not get her parents’ voices out of her head?

 

“Can I have a cigarette?”

 

The question was asked on impulse. He told her it was his last one because he was trying to quit, but that he didn’t mind sharing. They passed the cigarette back and forth as they spoke. It felt intimate, which Tahani wasn’t sure if it should, but she did not dwell on that. If he noticed this was her first time smoking, he did not comment on it.

 

“I wish I could do that. Change my life completely, I mean,” she said, her voice calmer and clearer than before. She was more in control, more centered. It was a relief, knowing that she was capable of putting it in words without bursting into tears and coming undone. Maybe therapy was not completely out of the question after all. “I'm not sure that's possible. The things I want to change… Most of the bad stuff that led me where I am today is from my past. You can't change that, you don't get a do-over if you have a horrible childhood.”

 

_You don't get a do-over if you have a horrible life._

 

“I had a difficult childhood, you know. My dad walked out on us. My mom worked two jobs, never saw her. It sucked. It sucked big time.”

 

He let her finish the cigarette as he spoke about growing up in someplace called Jacksonville, Florida (she’d never heard of that city before.) A lot of his childhood stories involved an American football franchise called The Jaguars (never heard of that before, either) but Tahani found she didn’t mind listening for a change. He had a nice accent, soothing even, and the way he talked was nothing like what Tahani was used to. It reminded her of someone, she knew that, but she still had no idea who or why. None of her classmates in Oxford or The Sorbonne had been from America, and she couldn’t think of a single American celebrity she was ‘friends’ with that this man could have something in common with.

 

They exchanged childhood stories, the more they talked the less she thought about how opening up to someone you just met in the middle of the night _in Cleveland_ while sitting on a sidewalk and smoking your first cigarette ever did not make any sense. She found that she felt comfortable with him. She told him about her parents, about Kamilah (he did not know who she was, but he did seem to have a strong opinion about Pitbull.)   

 

“Everyone thinks I’m a high achiever, a control freak, and that the only thing that truly drives me is my greed to succeed. Nothing more. No one cares about how I feel, and the truth is I feel so empty, so unsatisfied. And yet I act like I have everything figured out, I lie to everyone, I pretend that everything’s fine and that I couldn’t be happier. I doubt I’ve ever been happy, not one day in almost thirty years. I do not care, though, not as long as nobody else finds out. What does this say about me, about the life I am living? Am I really that shallow?"

 

“Listen, I am in charge of a 60-person dance group.” _That explains the clothes_ , Tahani thought. “That’s why I’m in Cleveland this weekend,” he said. “A dancing contest. Anyway, whenever we audition a new dancer, we rate them in five categories: dancing ability, coolness, dopeness, freshness, and smart-brained. I would give you an eight in every category.”

 

“Well, eight isn't bad, I suppose.” She hoped he didn’t notice she was disappointed he didn’t give her a ten. _And why should you care Tahani? This is a guy you just met, he knows nothing about you, he’s probably just trying to be nice._

  
“No, no. Eight is the best. It is a scale of 1-13, but eight is highest. The scale goes up and then back down like a tent.”

  
“Why?” She automatically regretted asking. “It's not important.”

  
“Lately, you've been really down on yourself, I think.  But you seem like an amazing person. You’re so pretty. Like Nala, from _The Lion King_. And you talk so smart. Like Nala, from _The Lion King_.”

 

Disney was another thing her parents had been opinionated about. They hadn't let their daughters watch most of the films kids obsessed over in the nineties. They thought they weren't challenging or intellectually stimulating enough for the girls, and when Tahani asked why they said they would only fill her mind with absurd, impossible to meet expectations. Kamilah never showed any interest in Disney movies, but the Al-Jamils were delighted when she accepted the studio's offer to voice a princess for their newest production. _Fucking double standards._

 

“I never watched _The Lion King_ ,” she confessed, cheeks blushing and heart beating incredibly fast because of this man's sweet words.

 

“The point is, you definitely are cool, dope, fresh, and smart-brained.” Tahani could not help it and smiled at this. Maybe his choice of words was far from what she would choose if she was asked to describe herself, but she felt flattered in spite of that. In fact, his words were actually kinder than the names she’d been calling herself in her head before he appeared out of nowhere. “I've never seen you dance, but I bet you're good. 'Cause you must be good at everything. I’m sure you're awesome.”

 

And then he said the one thing Tahani had always longed to hear, even if she had never admitted as much, not even to herself. It was the one thing she always wished someone had told her, the one thing she wished she had had (as a child first and as a young woman later) to hold onto.

 

“Be nicer to yourself.”

Her eyes closed of their own accord. Those four words from a stranger, that’s what truly undid her that night. She let them wash over her, wishing all the time there was a way to physically hold them to her chest, bury them inside herself, put them under her skin. She was scared that if she dared do something as simple as breathing the moment would be lost forever, the words gone.

 

They sat in silence for what felt like an eternity- and at the same time it didn’t feel like long enough. When she finally opened her eyes, she looked at this wonderful, kind stranger and simply said:

 

“Thank you. For everything.”

 

She meant it.

 

“No problem doll. I should get going, though.”

 

Tahani tried not to let it show that she was disappointed he was leaving. He stood up, and so did she, her body a lot lighter than it’d felt hours before. Lighter than it’d felt in a very long time.

 

“I don't think I know your name,” she said. She couldn’t remember if he had introduced himself properly.

 

“Oh, right. Jason Mendoza. Here,” he looked in his pockets until he found a business card for his dance group. “Call me if you ever visit Jacksonville, Florida.”

 

“Thank you.” There it was again, that smile on her face. There was something about this guy, this Jason, that made her smile. She was not sure she knew exactly what it was, only that she couldn’t help it. “My name's Tahani Al-Jamil.”

 

“Congratulations, beautiful.”

 

She didn’t hide her surprise. Not many people knew what her name meant. In fact, it was one of her favourite conversation starters.

 

“Do you speak Arabic?”

 

“No. Why?”

 

“Why did you say that, then?”

 

Jason seemed to be as puzzled by his own words.

 

“I don't know,” he shrugged his shoulders. “Just felt like saying it.” Apparently, saying the first thing that came to mind was a common thing for Jason. Tahani wished she could say the same about herself. Overthinking every single thing that comes out of one’s mouth was so tiring, so stressing. “You were smiling, and you have a beautiful smile. I guess I was just saying congratulations on that. Sometimes I say stupid things, especially since the incident with the print toner.”

 

She did not ask what that incident was. For a brief moment, she considered asking Jason if he’d like to go back to her hotel room. She didn’t want to be alone, and she wasn’t sure he’d not mistake her desire for company for something of a sexual nature. They could talk for a little bit longer, maybe drink a bottle of champagne. She wondered if Jason liked champagne. She wondered if Jason had ever drunk champagne in his life.

 

Tahani decided against it. She needed to sleep. Maybe she would indulge a little and have that duvet day instead of going to the spa. She deserved it. She had a plane to catch in less than eighteen hours. Besides, she was sure Jason had better things to do than keep her company while she tried to figure out what to do with the rest of her life.  

 

Because one thing was clear to her now: her life couldn’t stay the same, not after everything that had happened that night. She wouldn’t settle, wouldn’t keep pretending. Something needed to be done, some important changes were overdue, and she owed it to herself to try. There was a lot more to her than what her family had made her believe, and it was her job to find out exactly what her worth was. She had to be worth something. Jason seemed to think she was. People like to tell you what you’re going to be, and her parents had never had a problem with that. But it was not Tahani’s problem that they had been unable to see her for who she really was. It was time she let go of the voices in her head. It was time she stopped giving a damn- it was not her problem her parents had never cared enough to believe in her. She had to believe in herself. It wouldn’t be easy, she knew that. But she had to if she wanted to truly succeed and actually become who she wanted to be. She didn’t know who she wanted to be yet, but she would find out soon.

 

She made up her mind in the cab she took to the hotel: she would have a duvet day. Maybe she would eat something other than a salad- she was dying to try some mac and cheese. Her parents had never let her do that.

 

Tahani fell asleep at the crack of dawn, the ridiculously colorful business card with Jason’s number on it still clutched in one hand, a resolution heavy on her head, heavier than any of the thoughts of death and dissatisfaction she had had in the last six hours.

 

She would be nicer to herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea for this story came to my mind a couple of months ago. I tried to push it away, told myself I was too busy working on other projects. I told myself no one would read this. But the idea wouldn't leave me, no matter how hard I tried to focus on other things. It kept begging to be written. So I finally gave in and decided to write it.
> 
> This work was inspired by Marina Diamandis' absolutely brilliant music. Every time I listen to her songs, all I can think about is how much the lyrics relate to Tahani’s life, almost as if they actually were about her pain, her need for love and acceptance, her self-esteem issues, her story. 
> 
> I would love to know what you think of this first chapter. Thanks for reading.


	2. Chapter 2

_drinking champagne, meant for a wedding_  
_toast to the bride, a fairytale ending_  
_drinking champagne, a bottle to myself_ _  
savor the taste of fabricated wealth_

 

**marina and the diamonds, “shampain”**

 

Tahani Al-Jamil did really well the first four months after her near death experience. She made three important decisions on the plane back home from her relief mission in Haiti: she would get out of the spotlight, cleanse herself of all her worldly possessions, and delete all of her celebrity contacts from her phone (yes, including Bono). She sold her _pied-à-terre_ (the one just off the coast of Barcelona), moved to New York City and applied for a job at the Metropolitan Art Museum. She needed to be someplace where beauty and perfection had a deeper meaning, something she had only felt during her time working as an art curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Most of all, she was desperate to put physical distance between past and present, shed her need for validation from others. She had a new mantra now, words spoken to her by a sweet guy with a boyish face that may or may have not saved her life that night in Cleveland. But, as it turned out, being nicer to one self’s was easier said than done.

 

She found out about Kamilah’s wedding on social media. Tahani never received an invitation. She hadn’t been expecting one, either.

 

Every headline read more or less the same: _Kamilah Al-Jamil to Marry Self in Westminster Abbey Coming Spring._ Of course, Kamilah was so perfect she'd never find anyone else good enough to share the rest of her life with, so she was getting married to herself. The ' _bold, brilliant young genius_ ’ had told the press a different story, though. She talked about celebrating empowerment and self-esteem, embracing the idea that your one true love is no one other than yourself.

 

Both the media and the public were paying more attention to the event than they had to dear Kate and William's wedding in 2011. People were obsessed with it. The official Twitter account for Queen Elizabeth II joined in on sending her best wishes using the hashtag #KamilahTime. It was rumored that the Queen herself had written and sent the tweet. Noel and Liam Gallagher announced that Oasis would get back together for one show to honor Kamilah. Sir Paul McCartney gave an interview about how his _only_ godchild had been the inspiration for his latest record. Within the first 24 hours, Tahani had deleted all apps from her phone.

 

Five days into this madness and with three more weeks to go before the wedding, Tahani had an anxiety attack. Everywhere she went, Kamilah was there, a constant reminder of how unimportant, insignificant and unloved she was. Perhaps she hadn’t amounted to much in her life. Perhaps she was not as brilliant and talented as her prodigy of a sister. She’d never win a Pulitzer or a Nobel Prize. She’d never become the youngest person ever inducted into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame or the youngest person awarded an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony in the same year. She had made her peace with that, she really had. But she was a human being. Was she ordinary? Probably. She may not be ready to wear a ‘Best Person’ sash yet, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to do that anymore, but she considered herself a good, decent woman. The problem was no one noticed her. What was so wrong with her that no one was capable of loving her? Why was she so undeserving of care and attention in the eyes of others? It was not even about the spotlight, the desperation to be adored that had been a part of her personality for so long. Her pain had to do with something that ran deeper, a biological need if you will.

 

There was only one person that seemed to be completely unaware of what was going on with Kamilah. But then, he did not know what Brexit was, he had confessed to eating a candle because it smelled good, and he had once asked her if the Presidents on Mount Rushmore had butts on the other side. Tahani didn’t care. She liked him. She knew it didn’t make any sense, but maybe that was why the idea appealed to her so much. Jason Mendoza was everything she wasn’t, he did things she would never dream of doing, and yet he had become the closest thing she had to a friend.

 

It was odd, how it had started. Tahani had paid little to no attention to her phone during those weeks in Haiti. The morning following her near death experience, she woke up with his ridiculously colorful business card still clutched in her hand. She put it away in her wallet and forgot about it for the next month. At least she thought she _had_ put it away in her wallet. She found it again a month later, safely tucked inside her daily planner. But then a week after moving to New York she found it under a pile of magazines on her coffee table. Three days after that, it was in her wallet again. Tahani did not believe in such things, she wasn’t by any means a religious person, but it _did_ feel like some sort of sign. She decided to save Jason’s number on her phone, just in case she misplaced the business card _again_. She never knew where the bloody thing would turn up next.

 

She sent him a text her first Saturday alone in New York. For some reason, she could not stop thinking about that night in Cleveland. She was lonely and had no one to talk to, no one to tell about the ghosts that constantly chased her, the storm that was brewing in her head. This guy had proven to be a great listener once, and he had given her good advice (surprisingly so). She'd clung to his words, repeated them every time she felt sad inside, every morning when she got out of bed determined to face the demons that had followed her all the way from London. _Be nicer to yourself._

 

Maybe she texted him because they had something in common. She didn’t know anyone else that had gone through the same. She was sure there were probably plenty of forums on the internet, sites where people discussed these matters. But she chose not to seek comfort there. It shouldn’t feel so weird that she wanted to talk to him about the aftermath of their near death experiences. Was it wrong that she longed to connect with someone? Should she be scared of this need, this desperation to reach out to another human being? She was tired of wanting nothing but to sit and stare at the walls of her new flat, silently screaming for the rest of time. She wanted a friend that would show genuine interest in what she had to say. 

 

In the end, Tahani acted on impulse.

 

**Tahani Al-Jamil**

Hello. I don’t know if you remember me. My name is Tahani Al-Jamil. We met in Cleveland over a month ago and you gave me your card. I forgot to send you a message so you could save my number. I apologise. I hope you are doing well. Best regards.

 

_There, you've gotten it out of your system._

 

Feeling sadder and lonelier than ever, Tahani laid on the bed and pretended she didn't care that it had been five minutes and her text alert had not gone off yet. It would be foolish of her to get upset over this. The guy probably didn't remember her. She would delete his number and throw the card in the trash, yes, she would…

 

But then it happened.

 

He texted her back.

 

It caught her completely off guard, even if she had been waiting for it (she would never tell that to another living soul, but she had been waiting for it.) She dropped her phone and it hit her in the face, and then she dropped it again while trying to swipe right to open the message. What was she? Some silly schoolgirl? The text probably said he did not remember her, anyway. It was silly to get her hopes up.

 

**Jason Mendoza**

Yeah, I know who you are! Congratulations beautiful!

 

Tahani decided to ignore the fact that her stomach was making somersaults, tried not to think too much of how big a smile she got when she saw those seven words (yes, she counted them. She didn’t dwell on that, either.) Before she could come up with a reply, her phone was going off again. Jason had sent another text.

 

**Jason Mendoza**

What’s up doll?

 

And that’s how it’d begun. From that Saturday night on, they texted constantly. It could have been described as compulsive, even. Every morning she woke up to messages from Jason and fell asleep with her phone next to her pillow. They talked about everything and nothing, and it did not make sense in the slightest. All that they had in common was that something tragic had happened to them, some weird accident that had almost cost them their lives (although she had the impression that Jason didn’t want to tell her much about his own near death experience). There also was the fact that they came from very dysfunctional, broken families- different backgrounds, yes, but that didn’t mean her childhood hadn’t been as terrible as his. She told him things she’d never confessed to anyone, opened up about stuff that she’d long ago decided to keep buried deep inside. He made her laugh several times a day in a way she'd never allowed herself to before: honest and pure and full of emotion. He was so innocent, so well intentioned, it was impossible not to trust him.

 

Two months into their friendship he got an iPhone (his career as a hip hop dancer was going really well. He was a very talented artist. Tahani knew because he'd shown her videos.) She never remembered who asked the other first, but soon they began calling each other on FaceTime at night. She fell asleep talking to him once, too tired to keep her eyes open any longer, too comfortable being lulled by his voice to tell him she had to go. She woke up at 4 in the morning, her phone still in her hand, Jason's face on the screen. The time stamp on their call read 6 hours and 20 minutes. He had fallen asleep watching her sleep. She didn't care, didn't hang up. It was nice to hear him breathing. It was more intimate than anything else Tahani had ever shared with another human being.  (She felt terribly sad and disappointed the following morning. Sometime around 5 he had woken up and ended the call. She chose not to think about it.)

 

Tahani had another anxiety attack the day Kamilah announced Kate Middleton would be her maid of honor. The Duchess said she was delighted to have been chosen to take part in Kamilah's special day. ' _It’s a dream come true that she thinks of me as the sister she never had_.’

 

Was she surprised? Of course not. She was used to Kamilah pretending she didn't exist. The problem was that it still hurt after all this time, and she had no idea how to make it stop. She didn't know if she would ever get over how much she needed to be loved by people that were completely incapable of noticing her.

 

She was about to make herself a cup of tea when she heard her phone go off. It was a message from Jason.

 

**Jason Mendoza**

What’s up, doll?

 

She smiled for the first time in hours when she saw it. Those three little words were enough to light up her mood. He was always using words like 'dog’, 'homie’, 'cool’ and 'fresh’, which had been weird at first. Tahani was used to them now. She even caught herself thinking of a dress as 'dope’ last time she'd been to her favourite Manhattan boutique.

 

**Tahani Al-Jamil**

Just making myself a cuppa. How are you doing?

 

**Jason Mendoza**

FaceTime?

 

She considered this for a moment. She really wanted to talk with Jason, she genuinely enjoyed hearing about his day and answering his multiple questions about art and history and why it was bad to eat some things, no matter how nice their smell was. But at the same time she didn't want him to see her go through another breakdown. What would he think of her? Actually, she knew what he’d think of her: he’d tell her she was human, that she was right to get upset over this, and that she should be nicer to herself. It had more to do with Tahani’s fear of being so vulnerable, so emotionally exposed. It had been one thing when he’d been a stranger. It was completely different now that he was her friend. Somehow it made everything more personal, terror of abandonment and rejection lurking in the back of Tahani’s mind, constantly telling her not to forge any connections that may become important because they can disappear as easily. And yet it was too late for that: she hadn’t realized it yet, but she’d already started to fall for him. That couldn’t be good. 

 

**Tahani Al-Jamil**

I don’t feel like video chatting but we can message if you’d like.

 

**Jason Mendoza**

Something wrong?

 

**Tahani Al-Jamil**

My sister's getting married.

 

**Jason Mendoza**

Karina?

 

That was all it took for her to laugh and forget about her tea. Maybe Jason wasn’t the most conventional person she’d ever met, but he was definitely special.

 

**Tahani Al-Jamil**

Kamilah.

 

**Jason Mendoza**

Will you be going back to London for the wedding?

 

**Tahani Al-Jamil**

I’m not invited.

 

**Jason Mendoza**

Oh. That’s a bummer.

 

**Tahani Al-Jamil**

No, it’s OK. I did not want to go anyway.

 

It was true. She wouldn’t have enjoyed that, being surrounded by the things and people she was trying to distance herself from. That wedding represented everything she was determined to leave behind. She was doing great before this happened. She had a new flat, a new job, she was living in a city she loved, in a country she loved. She had found a wonderful friend in Jason, even if all they did was text and talk on the phone. She didn’t want to be a part of the circus Kamilah had turned her life into. And yet…

 

**Jason Mendoza**

When’s the wedding?

 

**Tahani Al-Jamil**

Weekend of the 9th.

 

**Jason Mendoza**

Dope! I’ll be in NYC by then.

 

Jason was moving to New York before the end of the month. He had signed a contract with a new agent, a guy that went by the name of Glittering Michael. He represented hip hop dancers all over the country. Jason was booked to begin working in an off Broadway production soon. It sounded like an exciting project. But then again, Jason had the ability to make everything sound exciting when he was telling a story. Nevertheless, Tahani was happy they would be living in the same city and had offered to help him throw a housewarming party. It would be an ideal occasion for him to bond with other cast members and make new friends. It would also be a great excuse to see him again, not that she minded whether they saw each other soon or not.

 

**Jason Mendoza**

We can hang out if you want.

 

By this point, Tahani was beaming, her anxiety over Kate Middleton's comments completely forgotten.

 

**Tahani Al-Jamil**

I’d like that very much.

 

**Jason Mendoza**

What time is it there now?

 

**Tahani Al-Jamil**

There’s no time difference, Jason. We’re on the same coast.

 

**Jason Mendoza**

It feels far.

 

It did. Sometimes it felt as though they were in separate timelines. They definitely belonged in different worlds, there was no denying. She cared less and less about that the more she got to know him. Truth be told, she had not really cared at all, not even the night she met him. Most of the time it felt as though she’d known him all her life, and that was what mattered. That was what weighted more than any other thing about Jason Mendoza: something about him made her feel safe. Even if he was in Jacksonville, even if they had only crossed paths once, a couple of words from him were enough to make everywhere feel like home. She knew this should have scared her. She chose to ignore that it didn't.

 

**Tahani Al-Jamil**

Well, we’ll be in the same city soon. It won’t feel as far then.

 

**Jason Mendoza**

We can hang out on the weekend of the 9th if you’d like.

 

She thought it was sweet he was offering to spend the day with her. It seemed unbelievable, but Jason did not care about Kamilah. In fact, he’d never heard of her before meeting Tahani. He had no idea what Kamilah’s accomplishments were, he often forgot her name, he didn’t find her impressive like the rest of the bloody world did. He truly was one of a kind.

 

**Tahani Al-Jamil**

I’d love to. Would you mind coming over to my place? I don’t think I’ll feel like going out that day. They’ll be showing the wedding on a giant screen in Times Square, there’ll be another screen in Central Park. People will be going crazy trying to find a good spot.

 

Asking him over felt natural, and she didn’t consider what may be implied until a couple of days later when she was rereading his text messages, a peculiar activity she enjoyed engaging in every morning on her way to work. Tahani decided it shouldn’t be a problem. She trusted Jason and she knew that nothing would happen between them unless she wanted to (not that she was hoping anything remotely sexual would happen during his visit, or ever for that matter.)

 

**Jason Mendoza**

Yeah, your place sounds cool. We can watch _Home Alone_! And Titans fails on YouTube!

 

**Tahani Al-Jamil**

Who are the Titans? Does this have to do with The Jaguars?

 

**Jason Mendoza**

I’ll send you a link to a YouTube video that explains why Jaguars rule and Titans suck big time.

 

**Tahani Al-Jamil**

I think you already sent me that the other day, hahahaha. OK, send it anyway! I’ll watch it before bed!

 

The weekend of the 9th Jason showed up in time for brunch. Tahani had made sure to have the mini waffles he was always going on about. She knew he loved all sort of greasy, unhealthy snacks too, so she did buy those as well (she wouldn’t be eating them, she just bought them for him). After all, it was important for a good host to take into account the taste of their guests. She was sure Princess Grace of Monaco would have done the same under the circumstances.

 

They ate and talked, and Jason told her more stories about Jacksonville, and he showed her funny YouTube videos on his phone (luckily for her, just three out of twenty were about The Jaguars). Afterwards, Tahani made popcorn and they watched both _Home Alone_ movies. She found it was a little bit disturbing at first. That poor neglected child, all by himself trying to stop two dangerous ex-convicts from robbing his house and murdering him! She enjoyed herself nonetheless, and Jason thought it was fascinating that Tahani had actually stayed at the Plaza more than once, but he seemed a little bit disappointed that she hadn't pulled any practical jokes on the staff.

 

By the time the second movie ended, they were sitting impossibly closer to each other, his arm around her waist, her head resting on his shoulder. In fact, if she tilted her head up a little, they’d be practically nose to nose. Tahani wondered if their eyelashes would touch. She was dying to know. And she was dying to kiss him.

 

It was awkward at first, almost chaste. She felt 16 again. He was soft and gentle, didn’t press for more, and she was happy with little pecks and nibbles here and there. Tahani loved the feel of his hand cradling her face, his thumb rubbing small circles on her cheek. It was intimate and sweet, and he smelled so nice. He tasted like mini waffles, which she told him in between kisses, and he said she tasted like strawberries and whipped cream.

 

“You look like a Disney princess,” he whispered in her ear.

 

“Thank you, I guess.”

 

“Who is your favorite one?”

 

“My favourite what?”

 

“Your favorite Disney princess. Mine is Jasmine from _Aladdin_. She's pretty, like you. And she's so smart. Like you! My all time favorite Disney character is Nala from _The Lion King_ , but I don’t think she counts as a princess. She reminds me of you, too! Because you’re awesome!”

 

She laid down on the couch with her head on his lap so he wouldn’t see her furiously blushing.

 

“I can't say I have watched many Disney movies, so I don’t have a favourite Disney princess or character.”

 

“You haven't watched _Aladdin_?” Jason asked in awe. “Oh, it's the best movie ever! Do you want to watch it now?”

 

So they watched a couple of Disney movies and kissed some more, and then Tahani suggested they opened a bottle of champagne. For some reason, thoughts of Kamilah were trying to make their way into her head. She imagined her sister would have bought the best champagne on the occasion of her wedding to herself. She couldn’t help thinking about it, all her friends, everyone that loved and adored her, all of them rising their glasses and wishing her the very best.

 

So she proposed a toast to her sister and her fairytale wedding, and Jason humoured her. She complained about her childhood and told him how upset she was Kamilah had decided to pretend she didn’t have a sister. The more she drank, the more she told him. They finished the first bottle, and then they drank another one. And Tahani couldn’t remember how it happened, but at some point she thought it would be a brilliant idea to open a third bottle. She really needed to rant about that bloody wedding. She had kept it all inside for far too long. And Jason was such a great listener, so patient and kind.

 

She didn’t understand why he said no when she tried to start kissing him again. 

 

“I really, really like kissing you,” Jason said. “You're so pretty, and so soft and smooth, like a bunch of water balloons. But you've been drinking. My mom says I should never kiss a girl if she's had too much to drink.” He pressed his lips to her forehead and then he added, “I'll still wanna keep kissing you when you're sober, though.”

 

She protested a little, but it didn’t take him long to convince her she had to change into her pajamas and get ready for bed. She went to her room and chose the white ones with those little cacti all over them. She had bought them the week before at Target. Her parents would have never approved of such a purchase, they would have thought it childish and tacky. She loved them.

 

Tahani went back to the living room, where Jason was still sitting on the couch. Acting a little out of character thanks to the champagne, she pushed him back and laid on top of him, her arms hugging his middle.

 

“Jason, I genuinely like you.”

 

She was being completely honest. She really, really did like him.

 

“I really like you too, Tahani.” He dropped a kiss to her forehead again. She couldn’t believe how safe and happy such a simple act made her. Maybe it was the champagne, too. Or maybe it was that she was really, really into this guy. “I should get going.”

 

“No!” she hugged him tighter. She didn’t want him to go, didn't want to be alone with her thoughts. “Please stay.” All of a sudden, she felt on the verge of tears. Yes, that was definitely the champagne. She shouldn’t have drunk so much. She really should have thought better, known better. She always ended up crying and embarrassing herself if she had too much to drink. That was why she often stopped after one flute. But being with Jason was so liberating, and she had been so upset about Kamilah... “Please stay. I just want a cuddle. Don't you want a cuddle?”

 

He hesitated for a moment. She closed her eyes and listened to his heartbeat, his breathing. 

 

“Yes, a cuddle would be nice," he admitted. 

 

She wondered if he could feel her smile against his chest.

 

“Will you be here when I wake up in the morning?”

 

She was scared of what his answer would be. She felt relieved when he said that he’d stay.

 

“Good. Because I really want to kiss your face.”

 

“Goodnight, Tahani.”

 

She breathed him in, happy to have him there with her in the flesh after all the nights they’d spent talking to each other until the late hours. Maybe it was the alcohol dominating her thoughts, but she couldn’t remember a time when she’d felt so happy and satisfied. It had been a really good day thanks to him. She wouldn’t have wanted to share her Saturday with anyone else.

 

He was still running his fingers through her hair when a different question popped in her mind:

 

“Jason?”

 

“Mmh?”

 

“How many people have you kissed?”

 

He seemed to ponder this for a moment.

 

“Does the sexy mouse robot in the Chuck E. Cheese band count?”

 

“Of course not,” she murmured against his chest.

 

“Oh. Seven then.”

 

“Including me?”

 

“Yes.”

 

She lifted her head and looked him in the eyes:

 

“I'm the seventh person you've ever kissed?”

 

“Yes. Is that a bad thing?”

 

“No. Just…” she was having trouble keeping her eyes open. “It’s just a curious thing.” She kissed his nose, his eyelashes, and then his eyelids. “Gosh, you're pretty.”

 

“No, you're pretty.” Now he was kissing her nose, her cheeks, her forehead. “Pretty beautiful.”

 

“Have you really only kissed six people before me?”

 

“If the sexy mouse robot…”

 

“No, Jason, it doesn't count.”

 

“Then yes, I've only kissed six people before you.” She placed her head back on his chest and let out a deep breath. She hoped he didn’t go home during the night. She was really looking forward to waking up in his arms the following morning.  

 

“Do you believe in destiny?” Tahani asked him five minutes later. 

 

“I'm more of a Beyoncé solo career kind of guy.”

  

“Dear friend of mine, I love her.”

 

“How many people have you kissed before me?” he asked her.

 

“Six. I've hit lucky number seven now.” And then, before she could stop herself: “I like your face. I really, really want to keep snogging you tomorrow morning.”

 

“Go to sleep now, doll.”

 

He kissed her forehead again, and then he shifted them on the couch so they were laying on their sides, Tahani nestled in his chest, his strong arms around her. If he was trying to get more comfortable, then it surely meant he wasn’t planning on leaving the second she fell asleep, right? She was hoping he’d keep his word.  

 

“Jason?”

 

“Mmh?” he sounded sleepy now. Maybe the champagne was finally working its magic.

 

“They say Kamilah is very lucky to be married to the best person in the world. Because, you know, she's married to herself now I suppose.”

 

“Yes,” he agreed. “You did say this a lot of times already.”

 

“I'm not sure she's that lucky.” Tahani yawned. “She can't be the little spoon,” she reasoned. “I'm lucky. I get to be the little spoon. She's not that lucky.”

 

He murmured something that she didn’t quite catch. And then:

 

“Tahani?”

 

“Mmh?”

 

“It's super fun getting to know you. Go to sleep now, little spoon.”

 

The last thing she thought of before falling asleep was that she had something Kamilah did not, something Kamilah would never ever have: she was Jason Mendoza’s seventh kiss, and the person he chose to spend the night cuddling with. For some odd reason, right then and there Tahani was convinced that had to be worth more than all the Nobel prizes in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello there! I hope you've enjoyed this update! 
> 
> Fun fact: I wrote the main idea for this chapter two weeks ago and began working on it about a week and a half ago. By the time 3x02 aired, I had already decided that Tahani and Jason would get drunk together and that he'd behave like a perfect gentleman. I was so surprised and so happy when I watched the episode, I spent all Friday beaming at seemingly random things. As you may have noticed, I ended up adding a couple of lines from actual episodes of The Good Place when I was editing this chapter. 
> 
> Thanks for reading, and please let me know what you think!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning**  
>  The rating for this story has changed from Teen And Up Audiences to Explicit.

_can you teach me how to feel real?_

_can you turn my power on?_

_well let the drum beat drop_

 

**marina and the diamonds, ‘i am not a robot’**

 

She woke up to the sound of Jason’s soft snores. Her back to his chest, their legs intertwined, his arms tightly wrapped around her waist, Tahani couldn’t remember the last time someone had held her like this. A sigh of relief escaped her lips. He hadn’t gone home during the night. He was there, a warm presence keeping her grounded. She turned on her side and pressed her ear to his pectoral, willing the beat of his heart to lull her back to sleep.

 

Half an hour passed by, and Tahani was still awake, her whole face now hidden in the crook of Jason's neck. He smelled of white soap and the caramel popcorn they’d made the day before, and for the first time in her life she understood what her good friend JK Rowling meant when she wrote that the scent of the person you’re infatuated with makes you feel as though you’ve been ‘hit by a ray of purest sunlight’. It didn’t make it any less terrifying- if anything, recognizing those feelings for what they were only fueled her anxiety.

 

And yet she didn’t move an inch from where she was laying. She snuggled up close to Jason, breathed him in as if wanting to fill her veins with everything he was and replace every single drop of blood in them with whatever it was about him that made her feel so deliriously happy, so complete. It calmed her and frightened her in equal parts. It was ridiculous. She’d never been good at dealing with the different, contradictory aspects of her personality, had always tried to suppress any feelings that were not supposed to be there, any emotions that could get in the way of her becoming the best. There was so much about herself that Tahani did not know, so much she had never taken the time to explore and discover simply because she’d been too obsessed with earning her parents’ respect. A quote from one of Uncle Freddie’s songs crossed her mind as she ran her fingers through Jason’s hair, but she forced herself to shake it off before the idea could get deeper under her skin.

 

Tahani was a grown woman. She would be 30 on May 7, which was less than a month from now. The difference between physical attraction, affection, and love shouldn’t be confusing to her. It was too soon to mistake the first two for the latter. But wasn't it also too soon to be sharing such an intimate embrace with a man whose presence in her life had been merely virtual and platonic until less than twenty-four hours ago? Wasn't it too soon to be finding comfort in watching him sleep and tracing the contour of his mouth with her thumb in a loving caress? Did those things feel natural because they had their roots in something as basic and primitive as lust?

 

No. It wasn't only lust, Tahani decided. He was handsome, and yes, she did want him sexually. They had only shared a couple of kisses the day before, most of them awkward and chaste. He had behaved like a perfect gentleman when she'd tried to take things further, and Tahani was thankful for that. No, it wasn't a sexual partner she was after. She hadn't had intercourse with anyone in almost two and a half years. It was something else entirely, what Jason made her crave. Ever since they'd begun texting and spending several hours a week video chatting, ever since the night they'd fallen asleep to each other's breathing when they were still living a thousand miles away from each other, she'd been (not so subconsciously) longing for a moment like this. And now that she'd tasted the bittersweetness of his lips, now that she'd listened to his heartbeat and soaked up in his warmth, she longed for more.

 

It was bloody terrifying.  

 

He woke up around six, all gorgeous smile, slated eyes half-closed and shiny with sleep. He nuzzled Tahani's shoulder, asked her if she wanted to fake being sick so they could skip Chidi’s class. Tahani laughed and pushed his messy hair out of his beautiful boyish face. She found adorable that he talked nonsense in his sleep. 

 

“Morning,” she whispered. They were nose to nose. She counted his freckles. Sometimes she did that when she was nervous. It helped her calm down, gave her a sense of control. On the day Kamilah had won a gold medal at the Youth Olympic Games, Tahani had spent the afternoon counting the numbers of tiles in the kitchen of her childhood home. She had tried to discuss this urge with her mother one time she got restless during a flight home from Pakistan, but Mrs. Al-Jamil had politely asked her to keep quiet and be a well-behaved girl like her sister.

 

“Morning, doll,” he yawned. “What’s up?”

 

“You have lovely freckles,” she said, the words softly spoken as if she were sharing a secret with him.

 

“You have lovely everything.”

 

She took a deep breath, pretended not to notice that her heart was skipping beats.

 

“I’m sober now. Do you still want to kiss me?”

 

“Very much. Do you?”

 

“Yes, please.”

 

She got up and held out her hand to him. The moment he took it and intertwined his fingers with hers, Tahani intuitively knew what her answer would be if Jason asked her to go to the end of the world with him.

 

He followed her, let her guide him to her bedroom and into the ensuite bathroom. It was probably bigger than the flat Glittering Michael, his new agent, had rented for him in Queens (it was definitely bigger than the motel room he had lived in as a child, the only thing his mother had been able to afford at the time.)

 

Tahani brushed her teeth while he watched her in comfortable silence. When she was finished, she carefully rinsed the brush with hot tap water and then offered it to him along with an apologetic smile.  

 

“I don’t have a spare one. Do you mind sharing?”

 

“Sure, doll.”

 

She'd never done this before, not even that one time at Taylor Swift's summer house with their dear mutual friend Lorde. But this was different. Jason was a friend, yes, but he was a friend she was about to kiss. She was hoping to have this bloke’s tongue in her mouth within the next ten minutes, what did she care if he used her toothbrush first? She’d get him one next time he stayed the night.

 

Tahani should have been terrified that she was already assuming Jason would become a regular guest in her home, but she didn’t have the energy to dwell on that. She was tired of overanalyzing every single thought that crossed her mind. Uncle Freddie’s words rang in her ears again: ' _funny how love is running wild and feeling free.'_

 

It was too soon to talk about love, and she was under no illusion there. There was always the chance that this would be a one-off. They were both going into this knowing that there were no strings attached, and she’d better remember that. But right now, she just wanted to embrace the wildness, the sense of freedom that being with Jason awoke in her.

 

He sat on the bed against the headboard with her straddling him, and together they took the time to discover what the other person enjoyed. It was slow and passionate at first. She learned that he liked nibbling, and he learned that she made the most delightful sounds when he flicked and glided his tongue against hers. She played with his fingers; he ran his hands across her back and hips. They talked in whispers in between kisses, traded terms of endearment as if they were precious secrets, lips brushing slightly with every word they said. 

 

“I want to be skin to skin with you,” she murmured, helping him take off her pajama top.  

 

They undressed each other slowly. Tahani appreciated the fact that Jason showed care with her underwear. “It must be expensive,” he observed. “I’m sure this costs more than all of my clothes.” She laid on the bed next to him, and her bra was forgotten under one of the pillows. She looked at him and found herself sighing in relief that he seemed to be as nervous as she was feeling. Wearing nothing but a pair of silk pants, she should have felt vulnerable and exposed. She didn’t.

 

He held her close to him, kissed her eyelids, her cheeks, her chin, her nose. And then he kissed the way down her neck and buried his face in her chest. He got lost in the taste and texture of her breasts, and she allowed herself to be swallowed whole by such blissful sensation, her hands absentmindedly massaging the back of his head. They were patient with each other, their caresses a little bit awkward, their movements sometimes clumsy as they experimented and figured out what worked for them and what didn’t. She almost came from him rubbing his erection against her clit over their underwear a couple of times, and she could tell that he was trying to hold himself back.

 

“Do you have a condom?” she asked him breathlessly, shaking with pleasure as he stroked her folds with the tip of his fingers. No one had ever done that to her before, but it was incredibly arousing. A couple more caresses and she’d come undone with his hand between her legs.

 

“Um, no. Do you?”

 

“No.”

 

 _Fuck_.

 

Neither of them had thought they would end up in this situation, that much was clear. She was off birth control and hadn’t had a sexual partner in quite some time. She hadn’t been expecting this to happen, that was why she hadn't considered protection before he went over. She hoped that Jason wasn’t carrying any condoms in his backpack or wallet because he’d never remotely imagined that his friendship with Tahani would be anything but platonic and not because he was fine with having unprotected sex, used to it even. She remembered what he had told her the night before, that he’d only kissed six people before her, and relaxed. Tahani felt safe with Jason, she trusted him, and that was exactly why she wouldn’t risk doing anything irresponsible.

 

“What do we do?”

 

He was letting her take control, asking her what she thought was best. But just in case she got the wrong impression from his question, he was quick to add:

 

“I don’t think I can pull out. I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that.”

 

“Of course not!” Tahani agreed.

 

A sigh escaped her lips, a mixture of frustration and disappointment. This was an inconvenience, but it didn’t necessarily mean that he had to put on his clothes and leave. She didn’t want him to. There were other ways they could resolve all this tension, for lack of a better term. She wouldn’t say no if he offered to let her fuck herself on his fingers. She wouldn’t say no if he wanted her to finish him off with her hand. Mutual masturbation could be a lot more erotic than actual intercourse. The idea alone got her wetter.

 

“We can… you know… There's other fun stuff we can do in bed.”

 

Jason’s face lit up.

 

“Oh! I know! Like pillow fights!”

 

“No, Jason! What makes you think I’d like to have a pillow fight with you while in this state of undress and with your erection pressed against my stomach?” Tahani burst into laughter. It was ridiculous.  _He_ was ridiculous, and she did not mind one bit.

 

“You’re even more beautiful when you laugh,” he said softly, a hand brushing the hair off her face.

 

God, she really, really wanted him to make her come. She wanted to make  _him_ come even more.

 

“Let’s try outercourse, shall we?” she suggested. She'd read plenty about that to know how it was supposed to be. “We’ll leave our pants on. Mine are thin and made of silk and yours are cotton, the friction will work just fine.”

 

“Will it be comfortable for you? Is this something you want to do?” Jason asked. “I don’t want you doing anything you don’t feel good about.”

 

“I’ve never done it before but I’d like to do it with you,” she admitted.

 

“We can always stop if it doesn’t feel good for you.”

 

“I know, my darling,” she nuzzled her nose with his. She noticed the front of his boxers was already stained with pre-seminal fluid. “I don’t suppose you carry any spare underwear around, so come on the bed sheets if you’d like. I’ll change them later.”

 

They started making out again, hands wandering everywhere, caressing every inch of skin they could reach. He sat and made her straddle him, told her he wanted her to feel in control and that he thought it would be more pleasurable for her if she was on top. He asked her to show him how to properly stimulate her. She felt so cherished, so adored. So wanted. She tilted her pelvis and they began rubbing their sexes together, trying different positions and speeds until they found their rhythm. The repetitive motion, the constant friction, the pressure on her clit and around her whole vulva… It was exquisite. It was heaven.

 

Tahani came first, ragged breathing in his ear, legs trembling uncontrollably. He swallowed the last of her moans with his kisses. It was so intense, she lost all sense of reality for a moment. She didn’t remember who or where she was. She could have been dead for all that mattered. All she knew was that she was with Jason, that he cared for her and that she trusted him. For a split second, she thought she recognized this wonderful sense of belonging. It was strange, but it reminded her of something else. Somewhere else. Even if she consciously knew that she had never felt like this with any other man, she could have sworn her body had experienced this before. Maybe in another life, if such things existed.

 

She collapsed on top of him afterward, pressed her forehead to his shoulder as wave after wave of pleasure washed over her. Jason held her lovingly, whispered sweet nothings to her. Once her climax was over Tahani took him out of his pants and gently stroked him until his whole body tensed, his eyes dropped close of their own accord and he found his release. It’d been too long since she’d shared an orgasm with another person, and she didn’t remember it being so beautiful, almost celestial.

 

They stayed in comfortable silence for several minutes, caught up in each other’s warm embrace. She rested her head on his chest and let him play with her hair. When she spoke, there was a tiny hint of shyness in her voice:

 

“That was very nice.”

 

Jason’s reaction, however, was much more enthusiastic:

 

“That was awesome!”

 

“Alright, yes,” she laughed, relieved that he sounded so happy. “Yes, it was. It was awesome.”

 

“I really enjoy being with you, Tahani.”

 

Her eyes lit up like the Eiffel Tower, and she hid her face in the crook of his neck again so he wouldn’t see the effect his words had on her, the power he had to completely undo her with a single sentence. It wasn’t that she was scared he’d use it against her, no. She simply did not want him to know because a part of her was already terrified this infatuation could be one-sided. There was so much she could do to protect her heart from breaking. She was beginning to suspect it was too late to do any of those things. She was already in too deep.

 

“I enjoy being with you, too," she said. And then she did the first thing a person should never do if they’re trying to prevent themselves from falling for someone: she made a confession. She couldn’t help herself. She exposed herself, showed him how vulnerable she was against her better judgment. She needed him to know what this had meant to her, how special it’d been. “I hadn't been this intimate with anyone in the last two and a half years.”

 

Relief overcame here when he shared a confession of his own.

 

“I was dating a girl back in Jacksonville six months ago. Didn't work out.”

 

Her whole body tensed in the most painful way. There it was again. The anxiety, the fear. That horrible weight in the pit of her stomach. Was he hung up on someone else? Did he wish he was back home with that girl instead of here with her? Did he like this other person better? Was she, Tahani, nothing but a diversion? Was he settling for her because he couldn’t have the woman he truly wanted?

 

“Why?” she blurted out. She hoped she didn’t sound as desperate as she was feeling. It was ridiculous, she knew. But after spending her whole life competing for everyone’s affection, convinced she was second best, it was very hard not to let herself get carried away by these dark thoughts. Her demons, she called them in her head.

 

“She was mixed with the kind of people I decided to start avoiding after I almost died,” he simply said. Every time they discussed the events that had made them want to change their lives and become better people, Jason always focused on what came  _after_ his NDE. He never talked about it itself. Tahani was given the impression that he was holding back a lot of details in order to protect her. From what, she could not imagine. She knew he used to do drugs but had stopped several months ago. Now he was putting a lot of effort into quitting his smoking habit, and she was proud he was down to a couple of cigarettes a week. She imagined whatever had happened to him that almost resulted in his death had to do with substance abuse. Maybe he had overdosed. She was glad he was fine, that he was there with her, alive, and warm, and breathing, all gorgeous smile and shiny black eyes. Perhaps one day he’d get to a place where he’d feel comfortable enough telling her more about what things were like  _before_ he had his NDE. She was surprised to realize she had all the patience in the world when it came to this man.

 

“I can't say I'm sorry to hear that,” she admitted.

 

“That I almost died?”

 

“No!” God, this guy could make her laugh. He was clueless most of the time. She should not be falling for him, and yet... She held him even closer to her. When she spoke next, she did it with her mouth pressed to his chest in the hopes that he couldn't quite hear her. “I can’t say I’m sorry to hear that you're no longer seeing anyone.”

 

He kissed the top of her head, and then he cradled her face with his hands and kissed her eyelids, her nose, her cheeks. Even her eyelashes. She had an urge to ask him to lay on his stomach so she could count the freckles on his back.

 

“Do you want some breakfast?” he asked cheerfully. “I know how to make french toast and coffee now. And I’ve always known how to make cereal!” He sounded so proud of himself.

 

She stole another kiss from him before he got up and put his boxers back on.

 

“French toast and coffee sound lovely, thank you.”

 

They had breakfast in bed (Jason’s french toasts were actually good and the pot of coffee he made was better than anything she’d had at a Starbucks since moving to the United States) and watched all three  _Toy Story_ movies. Tahani told him about the time she met Tom Hanks in Tim Allen’s yacht, and Jason asked her who Tom Hanks and Tim Allen were (he did get excited when he understood she was talking about the actors that voiced Woody and Buzz Lightyear.) She fell asleep in his arms halfway through  _Beauty and the Beast._ When she woke up an hour later, he was watching Pokemon on Netflix. She gave him a peck on the lips and went to the kitchen to fix some lunch. There still were plenty leftovers from their brunch the day before. Tahani was pleasantly surprised that he'd done all the dishes and rearranged the cushions on the couch. After eating some sandwiches, they spent the afternoon trading kisses and caresses that led nowhere.

 

It was the most fun, most relaxing Sunday she remembered having. He left some time before ten. She kissed him goodbye at the door, teeth clashing and tongues stroking one another slowly. She turned off all the lights, went back to bed (she'd changed the bed sheets hours ago) and buried her face in one of the pillows. It still smelled like  _them_ , and she smiled at the fresh memories of the two of them together whispering nonsense words and giggling while they snogged like teenagers.

 

He sent her a text fifty minutes later. Her heart skipped a beat, as it did nowadays every time her phone went off.

 

**Jason Mendoza**

Just got home. I had a really good time with you. Going to bed now. Sleep well, little spoon.  

 

 _Little spoon._ Those two words filled her stomach with butterflies.  _Oh Al-Jamil, you're in trouble._ She couldn't care less, though. 

 

**Tahani Al-Jamil**

I had a wonderful time, too. Sleep well. Talk to you tomorrow! 

 

The following morning she stopped by the chemist’s on her way to work and bought a pack of condoms. She supposed she would be needing them sooner rather than later. She also got him a toothbrush. Once in the tube, she dugged her phone out of her Louis Vuitton handbag to send him a message.

 

**Tahani Al-Jamil**

Hello! I was wondering if you’d like to come over to my place for dinner tomorrow. We could watch those movies about transforming cars you were telling me about the other day.

 

His reply was immediate. By the time Tahani arrived at the museum, she was so high on the happiness Jason Mendoza made her feel that she didn’t mind that all of her coworkers were talking about Kamilah’s wedding. For the first time in her life, she was truly satisfied with who she was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this story. I hope you've enjoyed this new chapter. More to come soon!


	4. Chapter 4

_is there any possibility_  
_you'll quit gossiping about me_  
_to hide your insecurities?_ _  
all you say is "blah, blah"_

 

**marina and the diamonds, “girls”**

 

Tahani Al-Jamil was having the worst week of her life. She hadn't slept in her room or eaten anything solid without throwing up immediately afterward since Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday she’d faked a cold so her coworkers wouldn’t pester her with questions about her puffy, swollen eyes (new yorkers were usually germophobic, so that would guarantee her some space.) On Thursday, she’d finally called in sick with some pathetic excuse her boss was too naive to believe, thus giving her Friday and the weekend off. By Saturday, Tahani had exhausted herself from crying. Sunday morning she laid on the bed in the guest room (the only room in her home he had never set a foot in) and stared at the ceiling for hours, her silent screams echoing inside her head, as it happened every time she threw herself a pity party.

 

Jason Mendoza had really messed her up.

 

How on Earth had things come to this? That question was driving her insane. They say the definition of a crazy person is someone who does the same thing over and over again while expecting new results (her dear friend Regina had written a song about that, what a shame it never made it to any of her albums!) Tahani was on the verge of insanity, there was no other explanation for this. She had only had three serious boyfriends in her life, she had broken up with all three of them, and walked out of those affairs graciously and unscarred. The truth was she'd gotten over those relationships before even giving them the chance to start. Why couldn't she do the same with a bloke she'd been seeing for less than a month?

 

Because there had been nothing ordinary about the circumstances in which they'd met, nothing ordinary about the way they had bonded over their terrible childhoods and family issues. There had been nothing ordinary about the madness they've been headed for since the beginning. That was why. He was special. They shouldn't have made sense, she shouldn't have spared a thought on him, it was ridiculous. And yet there she was, crying ( _dying,_ it fucking felt like dying) over her decision not to see him anymore.  

 

She remembered too well that last night, the one before it all went to hell. They'd made love... No, he'd never referred to it as 'lovemaking'. They had shagged each other until they were breathless, and every time he'd made her come she'd been overwhelmed by this feeling, this absurd idea that... Oh, what did it matter anymore? It was over. The kisses, the laughter, the good morning and good night texts on those occasions he didn't stay at her flat, and eating breakfast in bed while they watched Disney movies, and...

  
  
Fuck, she was crying again.

 

He had _really_ messed her up, and the memories were doing her head in. She couldn't think of anything else. On those glorious weeks they'd spent together she'd felt better, more alive and more in control than ever. He had made her dull heart light up with joy, filled the void in her soul that had always weighed her down like a rock around her neck. There was a song by her dear friend Justin Courtney Pierre she often thought of in those precious few seconds before Jason pulled out of her after sex, before separation anxiety kicked in-- which was ridiculous, she knew, because he always stayed right there next to her after intercourse, spooning her and playing with her hair and whispering sweet nothings in her ear. Tahani had never been able to shake it off, though, the fear that he was going to leave her. It had never crossed her mind that she would be the one to leave _him_. So she always fell asleep with her ear pressed to his chest, his heartbeat and the lyrics to a song she’d not heard in a long time lulling her to sleep:  _Humming a slightly varied tune, opposite angles of the moon, buried in layers of ourselves leaves room for no one else._

 

That's what Jason had done to her. He'd broken open something inside her, messed her up to the point she'd had to bite his lips or kiss him during her orgasms to keep herself from saying those three words: _You complete me._ And he would swallow her moans with his kisses, unaware that she wasn't trying to be quiet because she didn't want her neighbors to hear how wild she got when he fucked her. She just didn't want him to know her best kept secret: their torrid affair, however recent, already meant the world to her. It was bloody scary.

  
Was it logical, this unbearable pain in her chest, this horrible sensation that was eating at her flesh and bones? Anyone who's ever been in love would tell her that no, it wasn't logical, but that didn't make it any less real. It was possible. It was happening. Her heart was broken in two, but somehow it was still working, probably on autopilot. That's how it had been the first few days: she'd willed herself to keep on functioning because if she could still get up in the morning and go to work and pretend that everything was fine, then everything was fine and her soul was not in shreds, thank you very much. She'd only held it together for a couple of days, though. Apparently, in the short time they'd been together Jason had also managed to permanently damage her ability to fool everyone, including herself.

 

Shouldn't she have seen this coming? Shouldn't she have known better? Passion and lust and something even bigger and more terrifying that she didn't dare name…Those things had blinded her. Poisoned her. Their first time intimately joined had overwhelmed her-- shocked her, even. Lights out and covered in each other's warm embrace, the more they kissed, and touched, and sighed, and shivered, the more she believed their meeting and ending up like this couldn't have been a coincidence. It went against all of her beliefs, which was a contradiction in itself because she had none. But how else could she explain that they made sense in every way when they shouldn't have? How else could she explain that he seemed to know her body, all of it, and how to pleasure her? How else could she explain that she instinctively knew where to touch him and how, as if she’d already made love to him a thousand times before in another life? In another life, maybe…

 

When you're falling for someone you are stupid enough to trick yourself into believing anything that may justify your losing your mind, your clarity, your senses. Tales of soulmates and words like 'destiny’ and expressions like 'it was written in the stars’, it all sounds perfect when you need to convince yourself it's safe to let your guard down and jump head first into the unknown. Practically anything would do if you're looking to justify your handing over power and control to someone else. That's what Tahani had done, regrettably so. She'd become obsessed with the idea that there was this magical bond, this almost mystical connection between her and Jason that made it completely alright to let herself go. She had willingly given him the power to destroy her if he so wished to, and he had.

 

Tahani grabbed her phone and stared at the screen. No new messages. She had asked him not to text her, he had said that he wouldn't. He was keeping his word. She’d said she wanted space, hadn't she? He was giving her space. He was giving her what she wanted.

 

The problem was that she wanted _him_.

 

Before he left, Jason had told Tahani to text him if she stopped being mad at him. Well, she wasn't there yet. She didn't know if it'd ever go away. The anger. The disappointment. The only certain thing right now was that Tahani missed him terribly, and she did not know how much longer she could go on without giving in and reaching out for him. There were a million things she wanted to tell him, a million things she wished he knew, and they were all so different, so contradictory, she'd rather let it all rot on her tongue than try to make sense of it. She was too proud, and too fucking scared, and he had already broken her once. What were the chances he wouldn't do it again?

 

But the desire to get in touch with him was stronger than her pride, it seemed. She spent the rest of her Sunday writing messages, rereading them and deleting them before she could send them. Some were furious, others were desperate. All of them did nothing but confirm how fucked up the situation was.

 

**Tahani Al-Jamil**

I miss you. I miss talking to you. I miss sleeping next to you. I miss watching movies with you. I miss being the little spoon. I miss your good night and good morning texts when you don’t spend the night. I miss making love to you. I miss hearing you talk nonsenses in your sleep.

 

_No._

 

**Tahani Al-Jamil**

I’m so mad at you. I can’t get you out of my head. I can’t stop thinking about you. I want it to stop. I want you to get out of my head. Why won't you get out of my head? That actually angers me more than your lies. Please get the fuck out of my head, Jason, you’re driving me crazy.

 

_No._

 

**Tahani Al-Jamil**

I wish I could hate you. Please, Jason, tell me what I have to do to hate you because I’ve bloody no idea. And I need to. I need to hate you so fucking much, please tell me how.

 

_No._

 

**Tahani Al-Jamil**

I’m mad horny. I want to shag you senseless into the mattress. I don't care what you did, I just want to fuck.

 

_No. No. No._

 

That night, when she’d confronted him, Tahani had made sure to keep physical distance between them. One thing she had learned during their brief time together was that his touch made her vulnerable. It was like kryptonite. One brush of his skin against hers and they would have ended up having sex on the living room floor, and she would have forgiven him. She was mad at him, she truly wanted to hate him, was desperate to get him out of her head, but she still wanted to fuck him. She still wanted to come undone under his touch, cunt throbbing and legs shaking and his weight on top of hers and his ragged breathing in her ear and…

 

Oh, how had he messed her up!

 

Eyes closing of their own accord, she hugged a pillow to her chest and counted to ten, willing her body to stop shivering, praying to a God she did not believe in for some peace of mind. But she always stopped mid-prayer, never got to say amen. Her thoughts kept drifting away, back to their fight, back to the things they'd said to each other, the ways in which they had hurt each other. They'd both been so brutal…

 

Jason had been making dinner when she’d gotten the texts. He had looked surprised when she'd walked into the kitchen and shoved the phone into his face, her voice quivering, her whole body tense in anticipation as if it had known what was about to happen, bracing itself for the impact.

 

“Is this true?”

 

One second, that's all it took for her to realize that yes, it was true. The look on his face when he saw the picture she was showing him, that gave him away. She could read him pretty well by now, knew when he was excited, upset, worried, happy or confused. It didn't matter, though, because he had fooled her anyway.

 

“Baby…”

 

She had not let him try to apologize. Tahani had never been known for her forgiving nature, she wouldn't give him the chance to test those boundaries.

 

“You lied to me.”

 

She hadn't meant it as a question. It was a fact. He _had_ lied to her. He'd been lying to her face all along. And she had trusted him implicitly from the beginning, and oh what an idiot, what a bloody idiot she'd been, to let herself be swept off her feet by _him_!

 

“Please, let me explain…”

 

His whole body had tensed, she remembered that, and he’d put down the knife he had been chopping vegetables with. The kitchen counter between them, he had not moved from where he’d been standing because he’d understood that she wanted and needed breathing room. After all, Jason had also learned to read Tahani very well. He'd seen her upset before (never because of anything he'd done, not until that awful Sunday evening). Damn it, he'd seen her crying and talked her through a panic attack on the night they'd met, for fuck's sake! Nonetheless, nothing could have prepared him to see her this hurt, this disappointed, over the things he had done and the things he hadn’t said.

 

“Yes, please! Please tell me why you’ve been lying to me since the moment I met you! I’d love to hear what you’ve got to say!”

 

“I didn’t want you to think less of me,” he’d said, eyes fixed on the floor, unable to face her, unable to keep looking at the picture on her cell phone.

 

He'd sounded ashamed. Small. It’d done nothing to placate her fury. If anything, it’d made it worse.

 

“Why would I have thought less of you?” Tahani had been bordering on hysteria. “Did I think less of you when you told me you used to do drugs? Did I think less of you when you told me stories about your childhood, about growing up in poverty, about your mom working two jobs and you going to school at that dreadful place?”

 

“If you did, then you didn’t let it show.” He’d picked his gaze off the floor and looked at her while saying that. A slap across the face would have hurt less than the sharpness in his voice. She’d never imagined he was capable of sounding like that, angry and maybe even a little bit resentful. Bitter. She’d known right away where he was coming from because even if they did not look alike in the slightest, even if their backgrounds were so different, they were two birds of a feather. They both were always fighting against their own insecurities, trying to prevent fear of failure from swallowing them whole.

 

“You think that _I did_ think less of you but didn’t let it show? Is that what you think? Is that what you honestly think about me? Do you really have such a poor opinion of me?”

 

“Not everything is about you, Tahani!” He’d snapped. “I have a lot of problems too, you know?”

 

“Yes! I know!” She’d screamed in frustration, forgetting that she had neighbors, that she was a lady and was supposed to act like one, that she never yelled at people because she always behaved like a princess-- that was what she had been taught. That was what was expected of her. The wonderful thing- the terrible thing- about Jason, though, was that being with him meant that she never had to do what was expected of her. He didn’t want her to be anyone but herself, accepted her as she came, didn’t mind a bit if what she was doing was frowned upon. He didn’t have any double standards, or so she’d thought. All he’d ever asked in return was that she accepted him as he was, which Tahani had no problem doing from the beginning. “I know how hard you’re working to make it in New York! I know you want to stay clean, and you’re doing a tremendous job of it! I know how proud of yourself you are that you finally got your GED last year! I know you’re trying to save money to go to community college! Don’t bloody tell me I don’t know you have problems! What I don’t know is why you lied to me!”

 

“Have you taken a look at yourself? Do you have any idea how intimidating you are? You’re like some important British princess...”

 

Another wonderful thing- another terrible thing, really- about Jason was the easiness with which he made her burst into laughter at the most inappropriate times, in the most inappropriate circumstances and places. They’d had to stop mid-intercourse once when she’d broken into a fit of giggles. She’d been too distracted by what was happening down below their waists, thus letting him fumble in the dark for ten minutes trying to unhook her bra until she remembered that the bra she was wearing did not have any hooks. His reaction to her telling him had been to ask ‘ _Are you fucking with me?_ ’, and Tahani had begun laughing so hard he had had to pull out, roll off her and cuddle her until she calmed down. She had not felt embarrassed or self-conscious, not even for one second, and they’d kept laughing about it afterward.

 

His words about her being ‘some important British princess’ had made her laugh, too. But it’d been bitter, and full of poison, and completely joyless.

 

“I’m not royalty!”

 

“You may as well be compared to me!” and then he’d added: “And you compare yourself to everyone!”

 

One week later, she still believed a knife in the back would have hurt a lot less. He knew everything there was to know about her, he was the only person she could truly call her friend, and he had used it all against her. He’d undone her in the worst possible way by saying that to her face, by calling her out on the one thing he knew she’d been fighting for months: her obsession with what others thought of her, with what others had and whether she had those things too or not.

 

“When have I compared myself to you?” she’d asked, shaking with anger.

 

“You're pretty and smart, and a millionaire! You went to fancy schools in countries I couldn't find in a map until about a year ago! All your friends are rich and famous!”

 

“What does any of this have to do with you lying to me?”

 

“Would you have wanted to be my friend if you had known the truth?”

 

“I knew about the drugs and I still befriended you, didn’t I?”

 

He’d raised his voice even louder.

 

“Would you have slept with me if you had known about everything else?”

 

She hadn’t said anything at first, so he’d had to ask again:

 

“Tahani, would you have slept with me if you had known what you know now?”

 

It still scared her that she knew the answer would have been _yes._ She would have fallen for him anyway, of that she was sure. She’d fallen for him the second he’d sat down next to her on that sidewalk in fucking Cleveland, Ohio. If he had told her everything, if he hadn’t kept any secrets from her, she probably would have wanted him even more. They would probably still be together.

 

“I slept with you because I like you!”

 

Her answer had not been enough for him, though. Tahani had resented him so much at that moment, hated so much that he was the one who thought had the right to demand she gave him answers when it clearly was the other way around.

 

“I didn’t ask you why you slept with me.”

 

“You’re changing the subject!”

 

“You’re not answering my question!”

 

“Yes! I would have slept with you regardless of what you did or didn’t do before we met!” she’d finally given in and answered his question. “I’ve never judged you because of the drugs, I wouldn't have judged you for this! You are good to me, you've always been good to me! I trusted you implicitly from the beginning! I opened up to you, told you things I’d never shared with anyone before! And you weren’t being honest with me!”

 

“Tahani…”

 

“Why didn’t you tell me the truth?” she’d insisted.

 

“I already explained it to you: I was scared you would think I wasn't good enough for you. I really like you. We have fun together, you’re my friend…”

 

She’d laughed at that, too. They were _friends_! According to him, she was his _friend_! Why did this upset her so much? Why did it hurt even more than the lying and the secrets?

 

“I’m just your _friend_ ,” her voice had been dripping with sarcasm by that point. “You've been shagging me twice a night for the past three weeks and I'm just your _friend_.”

 

“You _are_ my friend and I also have sex with you! Those things aren't mutually exclusive!”

 

 _I’m just a friend he’s fucking,_ she’d realized. One week letter, she still thought the same, and it still hurt like hell.

 

"You know what? I can't do this,” she’d put her hands up in surrender. He’d defeated her. “I'm sorry, I can't do this. I need to be alone, please."

  
  
He’d gathered his things without uttering a single word, and she had stood there watching him, angry and hurt and disappointed, praying that he would hurry the fuck up so she could finally break down and cry in peace, no one there to witness just how deeply, how irrevocably Jason Mendoza had messed her up.

 

He’d taken one last look at her before closing the door behind himself. His last words still echoed in her head, torturing her.

  
"Text me if you ever stop being mad at me."

 

Seven days had passed by (the worst seven days of her life, not that she would ever admit it to another living soul) and there she was, writing and rewriting and deleting texts she knew she would never send him because she was too fucking proud. Why was she torturing herself this way? Why was the universe so determined to get in the way of whatever little chances she got to be happy, and cared for, and whole, and complete? And why did Kamilah always have to be involved?

 

Because _this_ had happened because of Kamilah. Little Miss Perfect had been the one to open up Pandora’s box and Tahani’s eyes. She’d been the one to burst her glass balloon, so to speak. She had sent her the information regarding Jason’s past. Not to protect her, of course not. Kamilah couldn't care less about what Tahani did or didn’t do and whom she did it with. The only thing she cared about was no one in the world knew what an embarrassment her sister was. Those texts had not been a peace offering, they had not been written out of her need to check if she was all right. She would never do anything for another person if she could not benefit from it, would never look out for anyone but herself.

 

Tahani had been lazing in bed while Jason made dinner when she got Kamilah's texts.

 

 

 **Kamilah Al-Jamil**  
What the fuck do you think you're doing, Tahani? Are you trying to fucking ruin my life? I just got a call from a friend who is an editor for an important US magazine and she sent me these pictures. She's not going to let them get published as a personal favour to me. She’s also told the reporter he can’t write about all the shit he dug up about your boyfriend’s past in some Floridian dumpster, Jacksonville or something like that. Stop trying to fucking embarrass me with your behaviour. If you want to shag an ex-convict, be my guest! Just don't let the bloody American press find out! I also sent you an email with a draft, the article that the reporter wrote, and some interesting information they shared with me so you can see the embarrassment I've saved us both from. You should be so ashamed of yourself, Tahani. I'm glad mother and father aren't around to see what you've become.

 

 

The pictures her sister was referring to, and that she had attached to her message, were of Jason and Tahani making out in Central Park. She immediately knew when they had been taken. They were from one afternoon he'd picked her up at work. He'd told her the weather was way too nice to stay in, and she'd agreed to an improvised picnic. He'd already gotten snacks and sodas, and he'd even brought a blanket for them to lay on. It'd been perfect, cuddling together under a tree and stealing innocent, sweet caresses and kisses when they thought no one was looking.

 

They've been fooling around with their iPhone cameras themselves that day, snapping selfie after selfie while they kissed around each other's cheeks and chins and noses. One of the pictures Kamilah had sent her captured the moment Tahani had melted into his arms after she'd seen how he had her number saved on his phone.

 

“This last one is too cute,” she'd told him, showing him one of the selfies. "I'll send it to you now."

 

"Got it!" He’d said, holding his phone up to her. And that's when she'd seen it.

 

"Why do you have my number saved as a little spoon emoji?"

 

"'Cause you're my little spoon,” he'd explained, beaming at her with pride. And then, as if wanting to change the subject, he’d added: “God, you’re so pretty.”

 

“Just pretty?” she'd teased him.

 

“You’re pretty beautiful.”

 

It had never crossed her mind that someone from the press could be following her, taking photographies, tracking down her every move and sticking their noses where they didn’t belong. Maybe Kamilah wanted the whole world to forget she had a sister, but Tahani still caught the media's attention apparently, although for all the wrong reasons.

 

Kamilah had also attached the police reports and confidential files where every single criminal activity Jason had ever been a part of was meticulously detailed, including the attempted robbery during which he had almost died. She somehow had gotten a hold of his mugshots, too. It hadn't surprised Tahani in the slightest. Her sister never did anything by halves. If Kamilah had wanted to destroy her and whatever chances she had at being happy with Jason, she’d obviously succeeded.

 

Tahani looked at the selfies they had taken that day at the park and began crying again. She couldn’t bring herself to delete them, or his old texts. She missed him. She didn't care that he was an ex-convict, she didn't care about the drugs. She fucking missed him, and she did not want things to end like this between them. She knew it was really selfish, but she wanted at least one more night, one last time, one last goodbye.

 

She wrote him a message and hit 'send’ before she could overthink it and delete it.

  
It simply read: _Let’s talk, shall we?_


	5. Chapter 5

_do you think you will be good enough_ _  
_ _to love others and to be loved?_

 

**marina and the diamonds, “mowgli’s road”**

 

 

Regret took ahold of her right after she hit ‘sent’. The weight of the world seemed to have settled in the pit of her stomach all of a sudden, which usually meant she was on the verge of a panic attack. What a lovely way to end this horrendous Sunday: now on top of everything else she was feeling, there was also the fear that he would ignore her and never reply. Maybe he’d already deleted her number. That thought alone made her want to be sick.

 

As one frequently does when one’s mind is one’s worst enemy, Tahani imagined Jason going through the contents of his phone, erasing all traces of the brief, secondary role she’d had in his life: the hundreds of words they’d written to each other, the secrets they’d shared, all the selfies they’d taken making funny faces and kissing and cuddling in bed… And then, just because she was that good at torturing herself with made-up scenarios and _what ifs_ , she imagined him doing all those things with someone else. A faceless but far more beautiful than her woman, nicer and sweeter, better at everything, a super-powerful-girl-almighty type of person if you will, being given the starring role in Jason’s life.

 

With this anxiety-driven fantasies came questions, too. Would he watch all of his favorite Disney movies with her? Would he talk her into building a fort with blankets and pillows in the middle of the living room one rainy Saturday afternoon because Netflix is down? Tahani could have sworn she felt it in her body, piercing through the anguish and the symptoms of the panic, his lips on hers, his tongue in her mouth, the hard wooden floor beneath her, softer and more comfortable than any King-size bed. They’d kissed almost to the point of asphyxiation in there, and then when she'd fallen asleep he'd moved her on top of him, let her use him as a human mattress while she took a nap. Would he do the same with this ideal, imaginary woman? Would she have to bite her tongue not to call the fort a love-nest afterward, as Tahani had almost done?

 

It'd been a terrible, ridiculous idea to contact him. What could she possibly gain from this? More proof that this had all been some sort of 'friends with benefits’ arrangement for him and that he did not care it was over simply because it'd meant nothing? What could she make of him not replying to her text? Because it was obvious to her now that she was not going to hear back from Jason. What had she been thinking when she typed and sent that bloody message? Was she really so pathetic that for one second she'd dared hope for… what exactly? What was it that she wanted from him? A heartfelt confession telling her he'd been missing her, thinking of her, and crying and _dying_ over her since the moment he walked out of her flat and of her life, leaving behind whatever it was they had been for those three weeks? Had she truly been expecting him to text her that he'd spent the last seven days constantly checking his phone, waiting for the little spoon emoji to pop up on the screen?

 

She had misunderstood the situation, misread his intentions. He had only wanted to fuck her, and she had wanted so much more she'd given him the power to fuck her up.

 

Maybe the blame should be solely on her, really. He hadn't broken any promises because he'd never promised her anything to begin with. It had all been in her imagination, right? Her desperation to feel connected to another human being had driven Tahani to jump headfirst into this mess. She'd brought this on herself.

 

It was time to face the truth and try to let go: he didn't miss her, he wasn't going to reply to her text, he didn't have any interest whatsoever in talking to her. How did that song by Uncle Freddie's friend Brian go? _It would be of small avail to talk of magic in the air, I'll say farewell._ That's what she had to do. She had to admit and accept that her feelings were one-sided. Now it was over and she had to let go, had to stop seeking attention and validation in all the wrong places, with all the wrong people.

 

Kamilah’s words on the day she’d almost died echoed in her head. _Honestly, I don’t really think about you._ Would that be Jason’s first thought upon seeing she’d texted him? What if he did reply and those were his words, too? _Honestly, I don’t really think about you._ Could she handle him telling her so? _Honestly, I don’t really think about you._

 

And why would he think about her, right? No one thought about Tahani, ever. Her parents had never taken her into consideration, had only seen her as the poor, talentless girl that would never hold a candle to their brilliant first-born daughter. Her sister had learned by their example, the two girls’ relationship corrupted from the moment they were forced to compete against each other for the affection and respect their parents should have given them both equally, effortlessly. She had no real friends, no sense of self-worth or self-esteem. She didn’t have Jason (she’d never had him to begin with). The terrible, devastating truth was that Tahani Al-Jamil was not on anyone’s thoughts because she wasn’t good enough to love others or to be loved.  

 

As she sat on the bed holding a large pillow to her chest, eyes puffy and swollen from all the crying, it occurred to her that she shouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing how weak, desperate and pathetic she was being over the end of their so-called relationship. The best part of an hour had gone by and he had not seen the text (the ticks were still grey, she had checked several times now). Was he deliberately ignoring her? It didn’t matter. She shouldn’t care. Some co-workers had once mentioned that there was this new feature, one that allowed you to delete texts you sent by mistake. That was what this was, right? A mistake. So she selected the text, tapped the trash bin icon on the screen and then chose ‘delete for everyone’. Breathing a sigh of relief, she put her iPhone back on the night table, buried her face in the pillow and started to cry again.

 

Forty minutes later, the unmistakable sound of a beep was heard in the otherwise silent room. Tahani hoped against hope that it was a message from AT&T offering her a discount on her monthly plan. But even before she grabbed the phone from the nightstand, she knew it wasn’t.

 

Her heart skipped a beat when she read his words.

 

**Jason Mendoza**

Tahani, the app lets you know when the other person sent a message and then deleted it.

 

 _Fuck._ Her coworkers had not mentioned that. She’d made matters worse! What kind of app develops a feature that allows you to sweep your errors under the rug but then tells everyone what you’ve just done? Now not only did Jason know she had sent him a message, but he also knew she had been overcome by regret and decided to take it back. Brilliant! Bloody brilliant! Just what she needed!

 

When she didn’t reply, he sent her another text.

 

**Jason Mendoza**

It's almost 2 in the morning there, why are you still up? Don't you have work tomorrow?

 

‘There’? Where was he? Had he left New York? He couldn’t be back in Jacksonville- Florida was on the east coast, too. Was he somewhere on the west coast? Was he in another country? Why the fuck did she care where Jason was? He could move to fucking Australia if he wanted! Maybe he had done that! God knew he was the most unpredictable, impulsive human being she had ever met! He owed her no explanations, and it was bad that she was itching to ask for one. Grabbing her phone and typing a reply was the opposite of letting go, which was what Tahani was supposed to be focusing on.

 

But there's nothing to be done when one's heart takes control and tells one's mind _Off you fuck._  

 

**Tahani Al-Jamil**

What do you mean by 'there’? Where are you?

 

**Jason Mendoza**

LV, Nevada.  

 

It was ridiculous, childish even, that the idea of Jason in Las Vegas gave her enough anxiety that she wanted to be sick. A man with no self-control whatsoever in a city known for handing out marriage licenses left and right. What if he got drunk and proposed to the first woman he saw? What if this imaginary woman was shit-faced enough to say yes? Why did the mere possibility of this hypothetical scenario coming true scare her out of her wits? Perhaps it had already happened. Maybe she was trying to get back together with a married man.

 

_You're not trying to get back together with anyone because you and Jason were never together in the first place._

 

She couldn't help herself. The need to find out what he was doing there was greater than her pride. Uncertainty would drive her crazy unless she placated her desire to know. The way Tahani saw it, ignorance wasn't bliss. You have to imagine the things that you ignore, and the things the human brain is capable of making up when you’re sad, and paranoid, and anxious, and stressed…One’s head becomes a torture chamber, and it’s hard to get out of there once the door’s locked.

 

**Tahani Al-Jamil**

What are you doing over there?

 

**Jason Mendoza**

Glittering Michael needed me to cover for someone with a broken ankle. We had two shows in Los Angeles and now a couple more presentations in Vegas. I'm flying back to NYC the day after tomorrow.

 

Oh, so he was there on a job. Tahani felt genuinely happy for him. He was so talented, and he’d been working so hard these past few months. It was hard to believe the same guy she’d met that night in Cleveland, the same guy she’d spent the best three weeks of her life with, was everything those files Kamilah sent her said he was. He had truly changed as a consequence of his near death experience. It made Tahani want him even more. If only he had been honest with her from the start…

 

**Jason Mendoza**

Why did you text me at 2 in the morning? Did something happen to you? Are you OK?

 

 _No, I’m not. Yes, something happened. You happened to me._ But she couldn’t tell him that. She couldn’t confess. What good, what difference would truth make? She had to protect herself. Showing vulnerability was the one luxury Tahani Al-Jamil had never been able to afford, and yet she’d let this beautiful guy with shiny black eyes and a boyish smile tear all her walls down. Right now, the way she saw it- and taking into account the state of her mind, heart, and soul- Jason Mendoza was trouble. Yes, he was still lovable, but she was in no position to fool herself any longer: based on the fact that he made her vulnerable, it was fair to say that her one-sided feelings for him had become worrisome at best. One text message asking if she was alright could not erase, _should not erase,_  the realizations she’d come to that night: her attachment to him was unhealthy, he did not reciprocate her interest in him, he’d only been after a ‘friends with benefits’ arrangement, she’d misread things.

 

_It’s time to let go, you have to let go._

 

**Tahani Al-Jamil**

It's not important. I'm going to bed now. Goodnight and good luck in Las Vegas.

 

That was it. That was the last message she would ever send to him. It was over. She would delete his number and change hers in case it ever crossed his mind to contact her again. Yes, that was a great idea. She would have to delete all photos and messages too, of course. Maybe it was better if she flushed the phone down the toilet right now, she could stop by the Apple Store the following morning before work to buy a new one. And then she’d buy new bedsheets and burn these ones. And the pillows, too. She was a fucking millionaire, for God’s sake, she could put this flat back on the market, sell it in under a week and move to a place he’d never set foot in. Her home was now haunted by memories of their time together. How could she go on living there? The ghosts and shadows of his words, caresses and kisses would torment her for eternity if she stayed. It was maddening enough to know that she was doomed to forever inhabit this body he’d touched, that every inch of her skin would always remember what it had felt like, what _he_ had felt like. There was no escaping that. However, she could- and would- escape from everything else.

 

But then he sent her what had to be the most beautiful love letter anyone could ever write to her.

 

**Jason Mendoza**

I miss you, you know? Every time I get a text I hope it's from you. It's always AT&T, though. But I keep wishing it was you anyway. Tonight when I saw the little spoon emoji on my screen again, that's the happiest I've been in a week. I feel weird without you. It's as if all the mini waffles in the world had disappeared from the stores, and there are no more _Fast and Furious_ movies, and the beat never drops in my favorite song. I don't know how else to explain it because I'd never felt like that before. I just know I hate it.

 

Tahani had read the complete works of Shakespeare, Borges, and Neruda. She had studied the greatest minds of the past ten centuries, devoured their masterpieces, their musings and interpretations on what made the world go round, the answer to that question always being the same: _love_. They had all tried to decipher that particularly complex mystery, but none of them had come even close to accurately describing what she experienced when she read that text. To Tahani, there was no poem or sonnet in the entire history of universal literature that could compare to Jason’s words.

 

Against her better judgment, she did not ignore him. She did not flush her iPhone down the toilet like she had been planning to five minutes ago. She didn’t even turn it off. Gone from her head were thoughts of moving houses and setting bedwear on fire. Tahani was powerless against his sweetness, and so her eyes went over those words once, twice, ten times as she melted at their meaning: he _did_ think of her. He missed her. It seemed he hated being without her as much as she hated being without him. Could it be possible that he had been just as miserable these past seven days?

 

Jason hadn’t let go. He didn’t want to let go. He’d been waiting for her to text him, to reach out and ask him to talk, to try and figure things out, all the while consumed by anxieties of his own. Maybe she hadn’t misread things during their time together. Perhaps Tahani had misunderstood what their bond meant to him because the concept of someone caring about her was still a foreign one.

 

He compared being without her to the sudden disappearance of things he enjoyed, such as mini waffles and those terribly loud and confusing movies about people riding cars. She also remembered he had once told her that he imagined his own personal hell would be going to a Skrillex concert and waiting for the bass drop, but the bass drop never comes. Tahani understood where he was coming from: it was the same dark, sad place she’d be inhabiting since their fight. It was the opposite of the almost impossible to explain sensations that had overwhelmed her every time he’d been inside her, every time he’d held her lovingly and rocked his body in rhythm with hers until they both found release in each other’s arms.   

 

Her dear friend Chris Martin had put it down in words in one of his old songs, back when his band made music Tahani liked listening to (she had strongly advised him against going for an electro-pop vibe, but he had not cared in the slightest). She couldn’t help but ask Jason, hoping he would write back the words she wanted to hear from him, confirmation that they were, indeed, going through the same pain.

 

**Tahani Al-Jamil**

Does it feel like you’re lost or incomplete?

 

**Jason Mendoza**

Yes.

 

Head spinning fast, dizziness overcame her. She had to close her eyes and take a deep breath before replying. Less than an hour ago she had been thinking of ways to forget him. Now she wanted nothing but to let herself fall deeper, harder, right back into his arms. Even if he was thousands of miles away, like in the beginning, knowing that every inch of him was missing every inch of her… It sent shivers down Tahani’s spine.

 

**Tahani Al-Jamil**

What do you miss about me?

 

Were they losing sleep over the same things? Did he dream of her kisses, her caresses, her hot breath on his skin when they made love and she buried her face in the crook of his neck? Did he miss their inner jokes, her little quirks, the contrast of their skin when they laid tangled together in the afterglow of sex, a mess of naked limbs? Which were the memories that haunted him most? When he woke up in the morning, his arms empty, the right side of the bed empty, bedsheets and pillows cold, was he overpowered by sadness? Was he tortured by thoughts of her not wanting him, fears of her just seeing him as a friend to have sex with and nothing else?

 

He replied with a question of his own.

 

**Jason Mendoza**

Do you miss me?

 

She did, desperately. But there still were issues they had to go through, things they needed to talk about before they could decide whether they’d keep seeing each other or not. Tahani wanted to set things right, hear his version of what had happened on the day of his NDE, hear everything that had happened before that. She had the police reports and files Kamilah had sent her, but she wanted to know how Jason saw things, what exactly had driven him to sell drugs and steal things and throw Molotov bombs at people’s yachts. She needed him to promise her he was not going to do those things anymore, to prove to her that she wasn't mistaken to assume he had really changed after almost dying inside that safe box.

 

**Tahani Al-Jamil**

You’re not answering my question.

 

**Jason Mendoza**

You’re not answering mine.

 

**Tahani Al-Jamil**

I asked you first.

 

**Jason Mendoza**

I told you I missed you first.

 

**Tahani Al-Jamil**

What makes you think I miss you?

 

**Jason Mendoza**

I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking. Do you miss me?

 

Couldn’t he see how much he affected her? Did she really have to spell it out for him? Tahani had no option but to think he was playing her. Jason was trying to make her say it, trying to make her confess that _yes, yes, yes_ : she missed him. She’d missed him every second of every hour they’d spent apart. He had to know by now, he couldn’t be _that_ clueless.

 

**Tahani Al-Jamil**

I sent you a message at 2 in the morning and then I deleted it. What do you think?

 

**Jason Mendoza**

Can I call you on FaceTime? I want to hear your voice. I got used to your accent, now English sounds dumb when everyone else is speaking it.

 

Tahani pondered this for a moment. Seeing his face, hearing his voice… It would undo her. She just knew it. But weren’t his texts already having that effect on her anyway? If they were going to talk things through, wouldn’t it be better to do it now, put themselves out of this misery once and for all? Or would she feel more comfortable waiting until he returned to New York and they could meet in person? No, that would be pure agony. That would be like willingly walking into a torture chamber. On the other hand, she did spend the better part of the night crying her eyes out over this guy. Would it be wise to let him see her with her eyes puffy and swollen? Wouldn’t that be offering the last vestiges of her power and control to him on a silver plate?  _This is what you do to me, this is the state I am in because I thought I’d lost you, because I thought you didn’t care._

 

No, she would have to tell him she wasn’t up for a video call at the moment. Maybe the following day. Maybe after he came back from the other side of the country.

 

But then he sent those four words.

 

**Jason Mendoza**

I miss your everything.

 

Tahani ended up calling him herself. He picked up after the first ring.

 

“Hey, doll.” He looked tired. He’d probably been at work, on stage, when she sent the message. He was still wearing his dancing clothes, light blue trousers and an orange sports jacket. It was hideous, the colors did not match. Tahani couldn’t have cared less: she still thought he was handsome.

 

“Hi.”

 

He was alone in a hotel room somewhere in Las Vegas Boulevard. Tahani had never been to the city of sin and excess. She wondered what it would be like to take a trip with him, maybe just for a weekend. Jason made her feel so deliciously free, she wasn’t sure they wouldn’t end up drinking too much and getting married in the spur of the moment, cheap rings from a pawn shop on their fingers and selfies with a guy dressed like Elvis Presley for a souvenir of their wedding day. She decided not to dwell on the fact that the idea did not sound so unappealing.

 

“Where are you?” He’d spent enough time in the master bedroom at her flat to easily recognize she wasn’t there.

 

“Guest bedroom.”

 

“Have you been crying?” he asked, a worried look on his pretty face.

 

Lying wouldn’t help, wouldn’t do her any good. They’d come this far, she owed him the truth.

 

“Yes.”

 

“I don’t like it when you cry, princess,” Jason said, his voice soft and sweet. Tahani had to fight the wish to close her eyes and ask him to talk to her until she fell asleep. She missed pressing her ear to his chest and being lulled to sleep by the beat of his heart. The sound of his voice was the next best thing.

 

“It’s alright, it’s nothing…”

 

“No, it isn’t.” His expression was serious now. He was sitting on the bed, his back against the headboard. “I am sorry if I hurt you, Tahani. I never meant to,” he started, and this time she let him talk. “You’re too nice, and too smart, and too pretty. People like you don’t hang out with people like me. I should have remembered that before we became friends. I should have told you the truth and let you decide if you wanted to be with an ex-convict or not. We’re like those dogs in that Disney movie, _Lady and the Tramp._ ” Tahani didn’t know what that one was about, they hadn’t gotten around to watch it, but the title was pretty self-explanatory. “You deserve a lot better than that. You should probably be with some prince, or with Prince if he hadn’t died. He was dope. Or maybe you should be with some sort of scientist that forecloses on banks.”

 

She laughed at that last bit, but then the weight of what he had just said hit her.

 

“Are you trying to convince me not to be with you?”

 

“I´m trying to talk myself into accepting that no matter how much I want you, you deserve better than me.”

 

Was this true? Did he believe that? Did _she_ believe that? Did she think that she deserved better than Jason Mendoza?

 

A year ago the answer would have been yes. Truth be told, a year ago she wouldn’t have given him the time of day. But she wasn’t the petulant, self-absorbed, narcissistic monster she’d once been. She’d changed. He had helped her with that. She could honestly say their friendship had shaped her into a better, more caring person. She wasn’t so obsessed with keeping up appearances anymore, didn’t care what others thought of her life choices. Would she be here if it hadn’t been for his constant support? He believed in her. They believed in each other, and that was more than what most people could tell about their friends and family. They were lucky to have found each other that night in Cleveland, and sometimes she had almost dared to believe it had been written in the stars. Sometimes she had almost dared to believe it had all been meant to be.

 

Tahani Al-Jamil did not know whether she deserved to be with someone like Jason Mendoza or not. Maybe she did. Maybe she didn’t. Perhaps he was the one that deserved better. She knew where he was coming from, though. He was as insecure as she was. Both of them were convinced they were not good enough to love others and to be loved. Now she realized that was the reason why she had pushed him away in the first place, why she had told him she needed time and space the moment they hit a bump in the road, so to speak. She had been upset, she had felt betrayed, but asking him to leave had never been the right solution. They should have talked things through a week before, but she had been too scared of how much she wanted him, how much she’d grown to care for him. Kamilah had presented her with an excuse to break things up before they got more serious, and Tahani had jumped on the chance. After all, it is easier to leave than to be left behind. And that had always been Tahani’s greatest fear: to be left behind. She now understood the way of her errors, and she was so terribly sorry.

 

_Please, please, I hope it’s not too late._

 

“I disagree,” she took a deep breath. “I'm sorry if anything I've said or done has led you to think that. That's not true. I was upset that you lied to me because I trust you too much,” she confessed. Surely he knew that by now, right? “But there must have been something about me, about the way that I behaved, that made you think you couldn't be honest with me…”

 

“It wasn't your fault,” Jason interrupted her. “I shouldn't have lied. You're not to blame for my mistakes. Glittering Michael said you had a right to be mad at me, and that I was out of place to call you out on your insecurities the way I did...”

 

“You talk to your manager about me?” Tahani didn’t make a good job of hiding her surprise. The idea of Jason talking about her with someone else, telling another human being about her and their relationship... It made it all seem so much more real. She had never talked about him with anyone else. She didn’t have any real friends she could share these things with. The thought of texting Ellen or Oprah to ask for some motherly advice had crossed her mind at some point, but she hadn’t wanted to bother them.

 

“He saw my Facebook posts and asked me why I was so bummed.”

 

“What Facebook posts?”

 

“Some songs that make me think of you.”

 

She had been avoiding social media since before Kamilah’s wedding, and she’d been so distracted hanging out with Jason first and torturing herself over her feelings for him later that she had forgotten to reinstall those apps again. She found that she was happier when out of the spotlight, away from all those people showing what they did and expressing their thoughts and opinions on every single thing. She’d have to log into Facebook to check out those songs, though.

 

“Jason, I really miss you,” she blurted out.

 

There it was. There was no turning back now. Pedal down, eyes closed, she had admitted the truth. Before, he’d asked her if she missed him. Now he knew that she truly did.

 

“I miss you too, princess,” he whispered. “Do you think you can forgive me?”

 

“Can you please tell me what happened on the day you almost died? I need to hear it from you.”

 

“I'll tell you anything you want to know.”

 

Jason talked for the best part of an hour, and Tahani listened. She never interrupted him, not even once, and she was patient as he struggled to explain the things he’d done and why he’d chosen that path. When he finished, they both had tears in their eyes. She appreciated his honesty, and she couldn’t help but wonder just how much easier things would have been if she had let him explain himself that Sunday afternoon when the whole thing had blown up on their faces. That could have saved them both from so much pain...

 

“I need you to promise me you won't do anything dangerous again. Please. Especially the Molotov bombs. You could have been injured, you could have died...” At that moment, as she said those words, Tahani would have given everything she had to be there with him, holding him close to her, both of them safe and sound in each other’s arms, away from every single thing from their childhoods that had ever hurt them and shaped them into the sad, lost people they had once been.

 

“I promise I’m not like that anymore,” he said, and she believed him. “And I won’t keep things from you out of fear of being rejected ever again. I’ll tell you everything from now on.” There was a little pause, then a sob from her, and then a question from him: “Do you still want to be my friend?”

 

Tahani did not have to think twice.

 

“I do.”

 

They both laughed and stared at each other lovingly for a couple of seconds, the air charged with something that was very hard to describe but that wasn’t bad at all. Tahani thought of another verse from that song by Uncle Freddie’s friend Brian: _It’s so good to know there’s still a little magic in the air, I’ll weave my spell._

 

“Do you want to hear about the cool cloud I saw today?”

 

“I'd love to.”

 

It was late, but she did not care. She was too happy to have him back in her life, too enamored with him and his smile and his voice to care that she had to get ready for work in a couple of hours. They still hadn’t labeled their relationship, but she decided not to stress herself over that. At least not right now. She knew that he cared about her and that he missed her when they weren’t together. He wanted her in his life just as much as she wanted him in hers. So Tahani laid on her side and listened to his stories about funny-shaped clouds and awesome dogs he’d petted in both Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

 

It was almost half past four when she started to yawn.

 

“You should get some rest, sleeping beauty. It's late and you have work tomorrow.”

 

“I don't want to hang up,” she yawned again. God, keeping her eyes open was almost impossible. “I miss your snores and hearing you talk in your sleep,” the confession slipped away from her before her brain could register the words were leaving her mouth.

 

“You fell asleep once when we were talking on FaceTime,” Yes, she remembered. “You are so pretty, I couldn’t stop looking at you.” The way he said it, it was as if he was admitting to doing something wrong. “I didn’t hang up, I fell asleep watching you sleep. I ended the call when I woke up a couple of hours later, though.” She remembered that, too. She'd felt so disappointed, but had chosen not to dwell on that at the time. “Sorry I didn’t tell you before. And sorry if you think that’s creepy.”

 

“I already knew.”

 

“You did?” Now it was Jason's turn to sound surprised.

 

“I woke up in the middle of the night and the call was still going on. So I watched you sleep for a little bit. When I woke up the following morning you’d hung up. I do that a lot when you come over, you know?” Her heart skipped a beat as she told him this. “You’re gorgeous when you sleep,” He was, and she could not get enough of that face. She overshared when sleep-deprived and probably would regret this after getting some rest, but at the time she couldn't have cared less. “You look so vulnerable, so lovable. I could stare at you for hours and never get tired.”

 

“Tahani?”

 

“Mmmh?” eyes closed and feeling more relaxed than she had in several days, she wished Jason would keep talking. His voice was her favourite lullaby, his words the lyrics to an absurdly long but uplifting poem that did not make any sense but that she never got bored of hearing.

 

“Can I ask you something?”

 

“Yes, darling.”

 

“When did you know that you liked me?”

 

There was something about the way he asked that made her heart ache. Tahani opened her eyes. She had to look at him while she told him this. He looked shy, almost sorry he had dared to make such question. His insecurities, his own personal demons, they were as bad as Tahani's. Jason was still coming to terms with the idea that it was possible that she wanted more of him than just sex and a good time. He still thought that it was unbelievable that she didn't think she deserved better. Oh, how she wished to know how to adequately put down in words that she didn't give a fuck what she deserved. She just wanted _him._

 

“It was the first night that we met, when you sat with me on the sidewalk and talked me through an anxiety attack. No one had ever done that for me before. It's the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me, actually,” she said softly. “You saw me. No one ever sees me, but you saw me and you cared.” And then she asked him the one question which answer she both feared and longed to hear: “Why do you see me?”

 

“How could anyone not see you, little spoon?”

 

She let the words wash over her, wishing they were tangible, something she could keep safe in a music box, a treasured possession that was hers and no one else’s. Jason _saw_ her, all of her, and he couldn’t understand why others didn’t. His surprise that she needed to ask why was a balsam for Tahani’s wounded soul, Kamilah’s harsh, hurtful words banished from where they had latched onto it that night in Cleveland. Her heart felt lighter, almost weightless for the first time in thirty years. She no longer wished to be seen, adored and admired by the rest of the world, did not want to be number one at all costs. She was seen by him, adored by him, and that was enough.

 

“When did you know that you liked me?” Tahani asked him. They were both now laying on their sides, staring into each other’s eyes. It was as if their noses were inches away, as if they were sharing the same bed, all the miles between them forgotten. Distance means nothing when intimacy is so pure, so strong you feel as if the other person is right there with you, breathing in what you breathe out.

 

“When I told you I only had one cigarette left because I was trying to quit smoking and you said you didn’t mind if we shared.”

 

“That was my first cigarette ever,” she admitted, a note of pride in her voice. “I bet you didn’t even notice.”

 

“I did notice, but I think you had worse problems at the time than swallowing too much smoke.”

 

“Decent point.”

 

She was yawning again.

 

“Doll, you’re falling asleep.”

 

“I’m not.”

 

She didn’t want to let him go yet, didn’t want to say goodbye.

 

“Liar.”

 

“Talk to me until I fall asleep and then stay on the line with me? Please?”

 

“I can tell you what happened when I was driving from LA to Las Vegas,” he offered.

 

“Nothing bad, I hope.”

 

“I got the address wrong when I programmed the GPS, didn't realize it until I was in Fresno. So I drove from Los Angeles to Fresno and then I had to go back to Los Angeles and then I drove to Vegas. It was fun, though. It reminded me of that _Simpsons_ episode when Bart and his friends rent a car with fake IDs. Is that an episode we watched together or did that happen to me and my friends and I forgot? Can't remember.”

 

“It is an episode of _The Simpsons_ ,” she told him. They had watched it together two weeks ago. She knew it was one of Jason’s favourites.

 

“Now I can say I've been to Fresno!” He sounded excited, almost childlike. “The gas station where I stopped to ask for directions was dope. I was like _Is this Las Vegas?_ Because Fresno looks nothing like Las Vegas,” he assured her. “And then the guy working the counter was like _No, this is Fresno, California._ And then I bought ice-cream and some lollipops. Best road trip ever!”

 

She laughed, told him she’d never been on a road trip, and then he spent the following twenty minutes listing every single thing he loved about them. And she listened, smiled at every word he said, and silently thanked a God she wasn’t sure she believed in for the chance to do this with him.

 

“Tahani?”

 

“Yes, darling?”

 

“I think you are my good place.”

 

The words took her by surprise.

 

“What does that mean?”

 

“It’s something Glittering Michael was telling me about the other day. You're the one person that feels like… I don't know, someplace that's beautiful and special and where I can be myself. You're all those things to me.” The concept was odd, but it didn’t make it any less wonderful. It didn’t make it any less true. What an interesting, wise person, this Glittering Michael bloke had turned out to be. She didn’t bury her face in the pillow to hide her smile. She let him see exactly what he was capable of doing to her when he talked about his feelings so openly, so freely. He had a beautiful soul, and she was so lucky that he wanted to share it with her.

 

“You're all those things to me, too,” she whispered, as though they were trading secrets. “Does that mean we're each other's good place?” Tahani asked, the smile on her face so wide her muscles were hurting. It was almost pleasurable.

 

“I guess that we are,” Jason agreed. “Now go to sleep, little spoon.”

 

That night Tahani dreamed of sweet, blissful nothingness. And when she woke up at a quarter past seven the following morning, the first thing she heard was the sound of his even breathing. He had fallen asleep watching her sleep, a smile on his lips that mirrored hers. He hadn’t hung up.

 

Brian May was right (she’d have to text him later to tell him that): it’s so good to know there’s still a little magic in the air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Thank you all for reading and reviewing this story! All of your comments mean the world to me, I truly appreciate them.
> 
> Fun fact: that story about driving from Los Angeles to Fresno and then all the way to Las Vegas? It definitely happened to me a couple of years ago. The guy from the gas station is probably still laughing at the face I made when he told me that no, that wasn't Las Vegas.


	6. Chapter 6

_sunday, wake up,_

_give me a cigarette,_

_last night's love affair_

_is looking vulnerable in my bed_

**marina and the diamonds, “obsessions”**

 

“We ran out of condoms again.”

 

She said it with a sigh, the delightful weight of his body on top of hers making it hard to thoroughly check the bottom drawer of the night table. Why did they even keep the condoms there? It was stupid, really. Jason had fallen off the bed trying to get one a couple of days before, blindly searching for them with one hand while he tugged down her underwear with the other, face buried in the crook of her neck doing something with his teeth that had resulted in a pretty big reddish mark below her ear. The fall hadn't injured him seriously or anything, and then one thing had led to another and they’d ended up having sex on the floor. So all in all it hadn't been so bad. But she should have moved the box to the top drawer then.

 

He lifted his head from between her thighs and looked at her with a puzzled expression that would have been almost comical if she hadn't been so damn aroused.

 

“We’ve used them all up already? But I bought three packs last week! Six times three is like eighteen or something!”

 

“Six times three _is_ eighteen. Thank God neither of us is _exclusively_ into penetrative sex, otherwise we’d be spending an even bigger fortune on protection.”

 

She'd found herself in a similar situation once or twice with previous… partners (boyfriends, really, but Tahani had made a decision not to label her relationship with Jason just yet.) The lack of condoms and her refusal to have unprotected sex had put those guys off immediately, and one had even gotten mad at her for 'leading him on’. The other had gone as far as calling her 'irresponsible’. None of those relationships had lasted very long after those particular incidents.

 

Jason was different. Nicer. Better.

 

Tahani sat up, her legs still tightly wrapped around his neck. Jason looked at her as if silently asking for permission to bury his face between her thighs and finish her off. One of the things she liked the most about him was his generosity, both in and out of the bedroom. He gave freely and expected nothing in return, always putting her needs and pleasure before his. Given her previous experiences with men (albeit limited), this sometimes took Tahani by surprise. Just like everything that had to do with him, it was both refreshing and terrifying.

 

And she couldn’t get enough of it.

 

She grabbed a handful of his hair and tugged at it playfully, wrapped her legs around his neck a little tighter and pushed her pelvis up until he was brushing her clitoris with his mouth again. They fell into a rhythm that was half-frantic, half-lazy. He knew how to read her so well and paid so much attention to how she reacted to every caress, every flick and lick of his tongue, that it made the act more intimate, more powerful. The build-up was exquisite, and by the end she was practically breathless.

 

Jason laid next to her afterwards and, as he often did, kissed her nose and eyelashes as they cuddled. It was moments like those that brought her a sense of calm and freedom so intense it was immediately followed by panic. She’d been making an enormous effort to push those thoughts away, telling herself that such insecurities and anxieties couldn’t possibly belong there, with them, in a bed that she saw more and more as _theirs_ and not simply _hers_ with each passing day. It went against everything she’d been telling herself she needed to do, but she couldn’t help it. The dark thoughts came and went on their own -- it wasn’t as if they asked for permission before they attacked. They simply appeared the minute she let her guard down, unannounced and uninvited, to feast on whatever happiness and peace of mind being with Jason meant to her until there was nothing left, only fear and loathing.

 

_Do you think you will be good enough to love others and to be loved?_

 

No, she wouldn’t let her insecurities ruin the moment, rob her of the here and now that she was determined to enjoy. Every touch, every kiss, every Sunday morning they could spend like that, a tangle of limbs, breathless and half-naked, she’d cherish it all while it lasted --  she wouldn’t waste whatever time they had left together obsessing over losing this.

 

She closed her eyes and focused on the warmth of his skin, the beat of his heart, the soft sounds he made as she stroked him over his boxers. God, he was gorgeous. She wanted to make him come, wanted to pin him down and fuck him senseless. How irresponsible of her would it be to suggest that he pulled out? No, that was a terrible, terrible idea. She couldn't let lust and desire cloud her good judgement. They'd had the same 'inconvenience’ the first time they'd been in bed together, and in that occasion Jason had been quick to let her know how he felt about the withdrawal method. And truth be told, they both knew better than that. Outercourse had worked fine for them that time, and it would have to do this Sunday morning as well.

 

They lay tangled on the bedsheets afterwards, her head resting on his chest while he absentmindedly played with her hair. She thought of where she'd been a couple of months ago, lonely, deeply unhappy, disturbingly obsessed with being number one. It was only logical to draw a comparison between the first 30 years of her life and where and how she was now. _Who_ she was with now. So much had changed in so little time. Her near death experience had opened up her eyes, as had meeting Jason that same night. Sometimes Tahani even wondered if it could be possible that such a thing as a superior, all-powerful being actually existed, and whether He or She had any saying in what happened to simple humans like Jason and herself.

 

Most of the time she attributed it all to mere chance and coincidence. Destiny, perhaps, or the universe. They both had been in the right place at the right time, and after that one night in Cleveland they had kept finding their way back to each other against all odds. That was all that mattered, right? The pull they both felt toward the other was stronger than the circumstances that surrounded them. There were many aspects in which they were different, that much was true, but she had more in common with him than with anyone else in the world -- and it wasn’t only the fact that they’d both decided to change their lives after coming close to ending up in a casket buried six feet underground. It ran deeper, its roots in their shared experiences of miserable childhoods and negligent parents, his worsened by poverty and hers by abandonment. She’d spent far too many years living in the shadow of Kamilah’s accomplishments and dreams (and the same had happened to her dear friend Ashlee, always second best to her older sister, Tahani’s other dear friend Jessica.) Jason had been brought up under the idea that he would never be good enough to accomplish anything, that he would be better off not trying to escape the consequences of his parents’ terrible decisions -- and what else was he to do if not following in their footsteps? After all, those were the only ‘role models’ he’d known until well into adulthood, until he decided to focus on his career and met an agent that saw his potential.

 

And in a world that had always turned its back on them, they truly understood and saw each other. They believed in each other. It wasn’t worth exhausting herself trying to be seen and adored by anyone else, if she already had him to see her, adore her.

 

But how much had things really improved for her if she still needed to be seen and adored by someone else to feel happy and complete? Her obsessive-compulsive behaviour hadn’t changed, the voices in her head had not become quiet. Her relationship with Jason (even if she was constantly fighting the urge to label it and telling herself they did not need a label, it still was a relationship of sorts) was a source of comfort as much as it was a source of anxiety. Every moment of peace, every early morning spent in his arms after sex and before work, it could never last longer than that: a moment, a fragment in time and space set aside for her, for them, only to be followed by a state of constant worry. Because this would surely end sooner rather than later, because someone like him couldn’t possibly want to stay with someone like her for good -- no matter how much they were always telling each other that this meant more than anything they’d had with anyone else before. Because she was surely doomed to one day become that ‘someone else’ in his _I’ve never felt like this before with someone else, I’ve never had something so deep and pure with someone else, I’ve never fallen this hard for someone else._ Tahani had not been born to get the starring role in anyone’s life -- sometimes it felt as though she was playing a supporting role in her own. She was only filling in until a better woman came along, that was what the voices in her head kept telling her. It didn’t matter that he told her she was his good place, his favourite _everything._  That was _now,_  but the present had the quality of being fragile and ephemeral, and whatever followed was always so unpredictable…

 

No, she would not waste a perfectly good Sunday entertaining those dark, sick ideas. She had just had amazing morning sex with Jason and he was now in the kitchen making her French toast and coffee (she’d made him mini waffles the day before). She couldn’t -- no, _wouldn’t_ let her obsessions ruin this, however fleeting and unstable their handmade heaven might turn out to be in the end.

 

They had breakfast in companionable silence, and afterwards they flipped a coin to decide on a Netflix show (Jason lost) and watched a couple of episodes of _Grace and Frankie_. They finished the second season, flipped a coin again (Jason lost _again_ ) but instead of picking a movie Tahani chose to turn the TV off and bring up a subject that needed to be addressed: “I could always go on the pill, you know. We could forego condoms altogether.”

 

She had been thinking about this for some time now. Judging by the expression on his face, so had Jason.

 

“Would you be OK with that?”

 

“It’s not like we’re having sex with other people. It’d still be safe sex. I mean, we’re exclusive, aren’t we?” It was logical that she wanted to know this, right? If they were to consider using the pill as their only contraceptive method, then asking about other potential and/or current sexual partners was the responsible thing to do. They'd never made any promises to each other, so it would be wrong of her to assume anything. What if he’d rather keep his options open? No one could blame him. As casually as possible, she added, “Unless you’re seeing other women. In that case I’d rather we keep using condoms.”

 

She regretted her choice of words as soon as she saw the hurt on his face. She _knew_ for a fact Jason wasn’t seeing anybody (well, she supposed it was alright to say that he was seeing her.) Tahani was letting her own insecurities and obsessions get the best of her. It was unhealthy for the both of them, she was aware of that. But she couldn’t help being defensive all the time, needing him to constantly reassure her that he wanted her, liked her, enjoyed being with her. It was impossible not to imagine just how easy it could be for him to find someone more interesting, someone better than her in absolutely every aspect, impossible not to be sure that some perfect woman would eventually come along to sweep Jason off his feet.

 

Everyone had obsessions, Tahani knew. The problem was that hers rarely let up, and now they were pushing her to hurt the person she cared about the most.

 

“Why would I be seeing anyone else?” He sounded wounded. Disappointed. Did she really not understand how much she meant to him? He told her she was pretty all the time, brought her flowers (he knew she missed gardening), called her cute, silly names (she blushed every time he referred to her as his ‘little spoon’)... What else did he have to do for her to understand how important she was to him? Maybe there was something wrong with the way he expressed himself. He was not good with words -- more often than not he blurted out odd things at inappropriate times, having long ago accepted that he lacked the ability to think before he spoke.

 

But maybe Tahani needed more than French toast for breakfast, inner jokes, silly nicknames and Dutch tulips, just like he sometimes needed to be _shown_ things instead of being _told_ things -- he tended to get lost when people talked in long, difficult sentences (when he was a kid, one of his teachers had suggested a follow-up appointment with a special doctor because he had trouble reading and writing, but his mom didn’t have the money or the insurance.) He probably wouldn’t  be able to put into words exactly what he felt, but she was worth the effort.

 

“It's only been you since I came to New York. It's only been you for as long as we've known each other” He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and looked at her lovingly, hoping that what little he had to offer would be enough for her, at least for now: “You’re everything I want to see.”

 

She let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding, her face breaking into the biggest smile he’d ever seen: “I’ll make an appointment with a doctor, then.”

 

She laid her head on his shoulder, let him wrap his arms around her waist. “Have you ever made this kind of decision with a partner before?” she asked out of curiosity.

 

“No. Have you?”

 

“I was on birth control when I was younger due to some hormonal unbalance but that was before I became sexually active, and I went off it after a while when I got better.”

 

“And you don't mind going on the pill again?”

 

Tahani shook her head no: “I already told you, the only reason why I wouldn't want to stop using condoms would be if you were having sex with other women.”

 

“OK. Let me know how much the pills cost so I can give you half. I know they’re expensive, you shouldn’t have to pay for it all yourself. It wouldn't be fair.”

 

She gave him a peck on the lips and turned the TV back on. She put _Grace and Frankie_ \-- season three, episode one --  but they barely paid attention to it. She began by stroking his thigh absentmindedly, something she often did when she was in the mood for sex, and fifteen minutes later Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin’s adventures were being ignored in favour of snogging. The second she felt two of his fingers enter her, she grabbed the remote and pressed ‘pause’.

 

“I thought you wanted to binge-watch that...” He said, his mouth pressed to her neck and one hand between her legs. She was _almost_ there, it wouldn’t take much more, and she didn’t want to come with two women she knew personally and had hosted fundraisers with chatting in the background.

 

“Sunday mornings are for lazy lovemaking,” she half-whispered, half-moaned. She couldn’t imagine wanting to do anything else but getting thoroughly fucked by him, over and over again. All she cared about was right there in that bed -- the rest of the world could wait.

 

“I’d say we’re pretty good at pounding it out no matter the time of the day.”

 

Something broke inside of her the second he said that, her state of arousal and euphoria quickly morphing into what could only be described as pure rage. Anger was boiling up in the pit of her stomach all of a sudden -- Tahani could feel it running through her veins, filling her heart with poison.

 

There they were again, her obsessive thoughts, as unwelcome and untimely as ever. She had no control over them. And no matter how much she tried to approach them rationally, they always overpowered her. The pressure in her mind was overwhelming, the panic started to rise inside her. And as she sat there, frozen, what a minute ago had been a piece of Heaven brought down to Earth now turned into her own costume-made Hell.

 

Why did it have to mean so much to her, the whole concept of 'lovemaking’, the idea that their desire for shared intimacy had to be born out something deeper than mutual attraction? Why couldn't she enjoy what they had for what it was? They liked each other, cared for each other. Why wasn't that enough? She kept telling herself they didn't need to label this, kept mentally scolding herself for being unable to 'live in the moment’, for failing to ‘take things one day at a time’. No matter how hard Tahani tried, she couldn't go on like this. She could fool herself no longer, not without risking breakdowns like the one she now felt was about to come.

 

The problem with her, her biggest obsession, her greatest weakness, was that she needed to be verbally reassured that she was good enough for others to love her. Moving to New York to focus on her career as an art curator, getting out of the spotlight and severing ties with her past in London, none of that had helped erase every thought that bothered her every day of every week. Being treated with kindness, being told how much he _wanted_ and _liked_ her -- it wouldn't do, not anymore. Maybe it had been alright at the beginning, but now it was different. She was in love with Jason, and she needed him to tell her he was in love with her.

 

Of course it was easier to fall back into old habits and repress it all. That's what Tahani had been taught from an early age on: expressing yourself is not lady-like, you’re not entitled to show how you feel, no one cares about you, no one ever thinks about you, whatever’s going on in your head -- no one needs or wants to know.

 

And so she shut off, and said nothing, and tried to convince herself that she was probably mistaking mind-blowing sex for something else, and no, no, she _was not_ in love with this guy, she was not cut out for love -- how could she be, when she didn’t even know how to love herself? How could she be deserving of someone else’s love, when her own family had had trouble loving her from the start? This wasn’t love, this wasn’t a serious relationship, and she shouldn’t want it to be either of those things, really. It wasn’t in her best interests. Why couldn’t she just give a little, get a lot, like everyone else did in these cases? Why did she always have to want more, need more, always looking for things that were out of her reach?

 

Why did she have to ruin everything by falling in love with him?

 

 _You can still fool yourself into making this about sex_. If she managed to follow her own advice, then maybe it would be alright. Not forever, she wasn’t _that_ naive. But at least for now. Eyes closed, she grabbed onto his back, pushed him down on her and then pushed herself up against his fingers. _This is purely about sex, you can still make yourself believe this is only about sex, and he doesn’t have to find out._

 

The only problem was that Jason had learned to read her so well in their brief time together, he realized right away that something was off.

 

“Why did you stop?” Tahani asked, mad that he’d pulled his fingers out when he’d been so close to getting her off.

 

He hovered over her, looked down on her with a worried expression on his lovely, boyish face.  

 

“Your whole body tensed,” he said, matter-of-factly. He frowned. They were usually so in-sync, so responsive to the other to the point of relying mostly on body language to communicate, especially when they were in bed. He was used to her reactions by now, had a pretty good idea of when and where and how to touch her. Maybe he had done something wrong.

 

“I was about to come!” she protested.

 

“No, you weren’t.” He wasn’t a very good liar himself, he had trust issues (he trusted people way too much way too soon), but when it came to Tahani he could tell when she wasn’t being honest. He could tell when she found something boring, he could tell when she’d had a bad day at work, he could tell when silly things like her sister being on the cover of an important magazine or winning five Academy Awards (whatever those were) upset her, and he could _definitely_ tell when she was about to have an orgasm. “You don’t…” Jason wanted to explain how he knew she wasn’t alright but, as per  usual, he was having trouble finding the right words. “It’s different when you’re about to come,” he said, finally. “I thought you wanted me to stop. I thought I was hurting you.” And then he took a deep breath and asked what Tahani was hoping he wouldn’t: “What’s wrong, doll?”

 

She had two options: she could either open up and talk about the dark, obsessive thoughts that constantly plagued her, or she could deny everything, change the subject and somehow blame it on him, accuse him of blowing things out of proportion and making a big deal out of nothing, maybe even say that it was ridiculous of him to assume her body _always_ acted the same when sexually stimulated. She chose the latter.

 

“The problem is you’re not being rough enough!”

 

Jason looked puzzled by this: “We’re never rough…”

 

“Why not, though?” She sat up a little, resting her weight on her elbows, careful not to push him off of her. For some reason she didn’t want to lose his warmth. She was picking up a fight, yes, but she was hoping they could get through it by having rough sex, which seemed to be the thing they should both be after. She supposed it was what Jason was after, what with him referring to their intimate encounters in that particular way. The idea of asking him to fuck her and pull out tempted her for a second time that day. She shook her head, as if that alone would be enough to shake her thoughts off. “What did you say we were doing?” The question was rhetorical, of course. “We’re ‘pounding it out’, right?” The words tasted horrible in her mouth. “That’s the way people refer to rough, stress relieving sex.” That’s what he wanted from her, obviously, and that’s what she should want too. “We’re not being rough enough to live up to your expectations, I think.”

 

“What are you talking about?” He sounded even more confused than before. He really was clueless, wasn’t he? Well, she was not about to spell it out for him.  

 

“Nothing,” Tahani sighed in frustration. Her whole body was shaking now, and she felt a burning sensation in her eyes. “Now if you're not going to finish fucking me, get off me so I can make myself come.”

 

She wanted to stop this useless discussion and get on with what they were doing before, but Jason wouldn’t have it. He got off her, sat on the bed and looked at her with concern all over his face.

 

“You’re about to cry.” They were half-naked, she was laying there with her legs open for him, why couldn’t he forget about it and let it go?  “You can't be enjoying this. Tell me what's wrong,” he insisted. “Was it something I said?”

 

Those big, dark eyes, so full of questions, so full of kindness, his efforts to try and decipher her so clearly written in them. That’s what undid her. She couldn’t take it anymore, couldn’t stay there and pretend that she wasn’t head over heels in love with this bloke, couldn’t pretend that she would be OK if this never was anything more than sex between two friends who got along great and were also maddening horny for each other.

 

“I don't want to talk about it,” she said. She got up, put her panties back on and headed for the ensuite bathroom. “Don't forget to lock the door when you leave,” she asked him, trusting that he would take the hint, gather his clothes and leave her alone to lick her wounds and torment herself with her obsessive-compulsive thoughts.

 

She locked the door and sat down on the floor, her back against the cool tiles of the wall. She started counting to ten in between deep breaths, but before she made it to four she broke down and began to cry. Burying her face in her hands, she put her head between her knees and tried to breathe in and out. It didn’t work. She wasn’t calming down. The fear, the sense of loss, the desperation -- none of that was going away, and the walls were closing in on her, and how she wished he could hold her and tell her everything would be fine.

 

_I wish someone loved me. Someone that would make my dull heart light up with joy._

 

_I wish I had someone kind and nice that cared for me, someone to hold me when I’m upset and scared._

 

_I wish someone patient and good saw how sad and unsatisfied I am all the time, how broken I am inside, so they could help me._

 

She felt a knock on the door. Had he not left yet?

 

“Tahani?” When she did not answer, he knocked again: “Tahani? Please, could you open the door?”

 

“No.”

 

“Tahani?” He tried again. He did sound worried. But it was better if he went home.

 

“I'm fine.” _No, I’m not._ “I just want to be alone,” she sobbed. _No, I don’t. I want to be with you._

 

“I'm not gonna leave you locked in the bathroom and crying,” Jason said. He sounded determined. “I care about you, you know?” Her heart was beating so fast it was hurting her ribs. “I'm worried. I want to know what's wrong. We were having fun and then you got upset, and I don't know what I did to upset you.”

 

“I don't want to talk about it.” _I’m too scared to talk about it._ “I want to be alone.”

 

“OK.”

 

He'd been defeated.

 

Tahani closed her eyes and focused on her breathing. In-out, in-out, in-out, in-out. It wasn’t helping -- she wasn’t feeling any calmer. If anything, her crying was only worsening. She was sick and tired of overreacting, sick and tired of letting her emotions overwhelm her and ruin those little, precious moments of happiness she’d always had to work so hard for. Why did she have to make it all so difficult between them? Why couldn’t she just leave it be? Things were going well, the week since he’d returned from Las Vegas had been amazing. Why did she have to go and mess it all up?

 

She heard footsteps approach the bathroom door. They had to be Jason’s, of course. No one else had a key to her apartment. But she thought he had gone -- she’d asked him to. Was he back? Why?

 

“Jason?” she called his name softly. She wanted him to be there, but the mere thought of him still being there made her anxious, and at the same time she didn’t know what she’d do if it turned out he had actually left.

 

“Yes?”

 

He was sitting on the floor, too, perfectly mirroring her position although neither of them knew it, a wall that was now both physical and emotional standing tall between them.  

 

His coming back had to mean something, right? Any other guy would have already left. Any other guy wouldn’t put up with a lot of the things Tahani made people put up with. Of course, sometimes Jason made _her_ put up with a lot of things others would not tolerate, and she was fine with that. Truth was they put up with each other because they had the ability to see past all the little flaws that would drive most humans up the wall. They could see the beauty in each others’ souls -- everything else was just background noise.

 

Another thing she had been taught as a child: no one would ever love her enough to ‘put up’ with her, so she’d better please her parents, she’d better please her au pairs, she’d better please her teachers, she’d better please her classmates, she’d better please her sister. Don’t let them see how you really feel, don’t let them see you’re troubled. No one wants to hang out with the fucked up kids. No one wants to befriend the freaks. Those ‘weird episodes’ she used to have, the screaming and crying, the pulling out her hair because she was stressed and overwhelmed, all of that had to be suppressed. She had to be quiet, and clever, and kind, and curious, and brilliant, and everything Kamilah was. Only that Kamilah was always, always so much better at it. So Tahani never talked about what bothered her. She never talked about things that made her mad, or angry, or sad. Never complained about anything. Locking herself in the bathroom and biting on a towel while she fought the urge to scream, that had worked for her the first three decades of her life.

 

But if he was there, then it meant he was not giving up. Tahani wasn’t used to that, to people not giving up on things, on her. She had left the only three men she’d been seriously involved with before _they_ had a chance to leave _her_ , something she had been positive would happen sooner rather than later -- she’d known that right from the start. It was easier to leave than to be left behind. It was easier to push those you love away before they did it to you. That was another thing Tahani had been taught: if you’re the one telling others they’re not good enough for you, then they won’t have the chance to tell you you’re not good enough for them. Her parents had been experts at that.

 

Well, apparently she was good enough for Jason to still be there after the way she’d overreacted. The poor guy probably didn’t even know what he had done wrong, probably had no idea what he’d said to upset her so terribly.

 

“Why are you still there?”

 

It wasn't an easy question to ask. It wasn't an easy question to be asked, either. Did she really want to know?  How do you open up to someone when you’ve been ridiculed and ostracized all your life for being yourself and always saying the first thing that comes to mind? He was scared he'd come up short in his attempts to express what was going on in his mind, what had been going on in his heart for quite some time.

 

But he had to at least try, right? She was worth it. She was worth so much more than she even dared to imagine.

 

Jason took a deep breath before he answered:

 

“I already told you. I care about you, I worry for you. I don't want to leave you if you're feeling sad. I don't know what I did wrong, but I don't like it when you're mad at me. I don't like making you angry. I'll go if that's what you really want, but I wish we could talk first. Please.”

 

Tahani wiped the tears that were streaming down her face with the back of her hand. He cared about her, worried for her, didn’t want her to feel sad. That should have been enough, right? That should have made her fears and obsessions go away. But it simply wouldn’t do. She had always needed and wanted so much more when it came to interpersonal relationships. The problem was she had been silent all her life, had never considered she could ask for those things she wanted and needed, that all her doubts and questions were valid and that demanding answers didn’t necessarily make her a spoilt little girl. She was finding her voice just now, and Jason wanted to hear her. In fact, Jason had been helping her find it ever since that night in Cleveland.

 

So she had to be honest with herself, and she had to be honest with him. It was not alright to keep on hiding anymore, to keep on pushing it all away and wishing it would magically disappear. He’d shown her he could put up with her, that he wanted to put up with her. He was, after all, a fucked up kid as well. An unloved kid, such as herself, and that’s what had initially driven them to one another. That’s why they had begun hanging out together in the first place. It wasn’t illogical to think that maybe, _maybe_ , they were in this together for a reason. So in a moment of extreme vulnerability, she let down her guard and asked:

 

“What are we?”

 

And not for the first time that day, Jason Mendoza was taken by surprise.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

Tahani sighed. She could not believe they were about to have this conversation while she was sitting on the bathroom floor, head against the wall, a locked door between them. But it was what it was, and so she went with it.

 

“Are we in a relationship? Are we dating?”

 

“I don’t know.” He sounded genuinely confused. “Are we?”

 

“You don’t know?” She couldn’t help but snort. She felt a little outraged, if she were to be honest (which apparently was a thing she intended to do more often from now on.) How could he not know what they were? How could he tell her he didn’t know and then ask, as if she knew better? (Perhaps because she always acted like she knew better.)

 

“You don’t seem to know either and you’re as involved in this as I am.”

 

There it was. That was one of the reasons why she liked being with him so much. Why she _needed_ to be with him so much. He put her in her place, made her see that she wasn’t above everyone, and that she was as flawed and as human as everyone else -- even if she spent a lot of time pretending that she was not (force of habit). He told her things no one else would have told her before, because no one else had ever cared. And he did all of it with patience and kindness.

 

“I do know how I feel about you, but I don’t know how you feel about me.”

 

“You don’t?” again with the tone of surprise.

 

“No.” Wasn’t it obvious?

 

“Tahani, I like you…”

 

She cut him off. She was getting more anxious, the whole dialogue becoming more and more exasperating.

 

“Do you like _me_ or do you like _having sex with me_?” Tahani hoped he knew there was a difference. God, did she know there was a difference!

 

“I like _you_ and I like _having sex with you_. I didn’t think those were mutually exclusive...”

 

She took another deep breath and decided to go further into the matter. They were opening up, it was now or never. Things could not get any worse than they already were, could they? If he was going to leave her or tell her he only wanted sex or that they were only friends with benefits or whatever, he was going to do it anyway. She may as well ask him everything she wanted to know.

 

“Do you like me as a friend?”

 

“Yes! You are my best friend! I’m closer to you than I’ve ever been to anybody, including Pillboi and Donkey Doug.” How could she not know this?

 

She felt her throat closing up, and a horrible weight settled in the pit of her stomach.

 

“So that’s it. We’re just friends with benefits. That’s how you feel about me. That's the sort of agreement you want us to have.” The faster she talked, the faster they sorted this out, the less it would hurt, right? Or so she chose to believe.

 

“I didn’t say that’s how I feel about you.”

 

“Jason, sometimes you’re so bloody confusing!” Tahani protested, exasperated. She felt on the verge of tears again. This was so frustrating. _They_ were so frustrating. “One minute you’re a sweetheart and next minute you make me feel like I’m just a good shag.”

 

“Yes, you’re the best sex I’ve ever had!” he said. “You’re gorgeous and you make me horny all the time. We have a lot of fun together in bed, but there’s something else to this. I can’t get enough of you. I like your smile, and spooning you when we sleep, and watching movies with you.” Once he started talking, it seemed like he couldn’t bring himself to stop. “I like your voice, and not only because your accent turns me on. I like the things you say, and how much you know about art and science and music, and all your stories with your friends from London. I like how you can do your makeup in five minutes in the subway -- you’re like an eyeliner ninja!” He actually sounded proud of this, and she couldn’t help but smile. “And you always pay attention to what I have to say.” This last bit gave her stomach butterflies. “The thing is,” he continued “I could spend all day talking about you and all the little things that make you awesome. I’m not great with words, but I swear that I could. But I think the most important one is that being with you, sharing stuff with you… it makes me happy. Having you in my life makes me happy. Why can’t you see that? What am I doing wrong?” This felt more like a rhetorical question. “I tell you you’re pretty a hundred times a day. I bring you flowers and breakfast in bed every morning. I tell you that I miss you, and that I hate being without you, and that you are my good place. What’s confusing about that? I think I’ve made pretty clear what I feel about you.”

 

It was true. Everything he was saying, everything was true, and he had been trying to show her in a million different ways, but she had been too busy wanting what she did not have, what he could not offer: words of reassurance. And so she had failed to see what really mattered: he was no good with words, but that did not mean every little thing she wanted to hear wasn’t real. He didn’t say things, but he did things, and he felt things. Someone _could_ feel this way about her. Someone _did_ feel this way about her.

 

“You make me feel so much all of the time, and it’s all so different, but it all makes sense,” Jason went on. “You’re my favorite person, and place, and song in the world…”

 

“How can a person be another person’s favorite song?” she asked, surprised. Again, she was focusing on little details instead of contemplating the big picture. But he liked her this way, right? He had just told her as much. _He liked her just the way she was._

 

“I don’t know, but you are that to me.” Tahani could almost see him shrugging as he said this. “I have trouble labeling relationships, you know? I’ve never had anyone to call mine before. I’ve never cared about someone this much, or wanted someone this much. Being with you is full of firsts for me.” The butterflies in her stomach were getting out of control now. “I haven’t said those words to you yet because I wanted it to be special. I didn’t want you to think I was rushing into things or just taking it lightly and being impulsive like those other times… It’s different with you because I mean it. Maybe that’s why it’s so scary.” And then he asked the one question she feared the most, the one that needed answering the most: “Aren’t you scared?”

 

“Yes.” It was barely a whisper, and it wouldn’t have been audible if he had not been paying attention to every word he could hear from the other side of the wall. “I’m scared out of my mind.”

 

“Do you want to be scared together?” he suggested this as if it was the simplest solution. Maybe it was.

 

“Is there such thing? Being scared together?”

 

“Yes. Why shouldn't there be?” He always made complicated things sound so simple. Then he asked the other question she feared the most, the question no one else had ever thought of asking her because who cared about Tahani’s feelings, right? Well, apparently Jason did. “What are you scared of?”

 

She closed her eyes again, felt the tears streaming down her face again. It was time to come clean, time to let it all out and do what she had always been taught not to do: telling others exactly what was going on in her mind, no matter how ugly, how twisted, how complicated.

 

“When it comes to us? Everything. I’m scared that we won’t work, I’m scared that we will. I’m scared you don’t want from me the same things I want from you.” Once she began listing all the things she obsessed over on a daily basis, it was impossible to stop. “What if you realize I am not good enough for you? What if you meet someone better, more beautiful, more intelligent, more interesting? What if you fall for her in a way no one could ever fall for me, and you leave, and I never see you again?” God, it was so relieving, giving voice to all these monsters, all these fears. It was so relieving, knowing that he was listening. “I’m terrified of how careless and free and complete I feel when I am holding you, and at the same time I wish I could erase all these dark thoughts, these insecurities… These demons in my head, the voices whispering that we’re not going to last, that you could never want me the same way I want you, that we are doomed from the start because I’m worthless.”

 

“Tahani, you’re far from worthless,” he interrupted her.

 

“I wish I could wipe out all the sad ideas that come to me when I am holding you,” she confessed. Now she didn’t want to stop talking. She needed to keep going, needed to get this all out. It felt so good, so right, to be finally doing this. “You said being with me is full of firsts for you… Well, I'd never had someone I could be myself with before I met you. You've shown me that it's fine to let my hair down -- metaphorically speaking, of course, since I've never worn my hair up to begin with, I'm not a factory worker--.”

 

He cut her off: “That's not a very nice thing to say. There's nothing wrong with being a factory worker. Would you like me any less if I were a factory worker?”

 

“Of course not!” She was so embarrassed. God, she could be a horrible person sometimes. And Jason knew that, and he still liked her. He also knew that it was alright to tell her off when she acted like her old self.

 

“I know you don’t mean those things, but you should keep in mind that that kind of comments can hurt people. I know you wouldn’t want to hurt anyone, doll.”

 

“See? These are the things I like about you. You put me in my place when I'm out of line. You tell me when I say or do something wrong. You remind me that I'm not above everyone else, that I should be kinder and nicer…”

 

She had so much to learn from him. There were so many things she needed to change -- she wasn’t even halfway there. But she wanted to keep on trying, wanted Jason to be there with her each step of the way. Everything was so much brighter when he was by her side.

 

They could to this. They could help each other reach their full potential. They could help each other heal, help each other understand that no matter what they had been told or taught: they were deserving of happiness, they were deserving of the second chances life threw at them. They were alive for a reason, they’d found each other for a reason. Perhaps it was not all a coincidence, after all…

 

“You make me want to be a better person.” Tahani said, “I never felt this way with my other friends. I'm not sure the people I used to hang out with before I moved to the States were my real friends. I'm not sure I was a very good friend to them either.” It was painful to think about all the time she’d wasted, all the energy she’d invested in people she had not loved and that had not loved her. How she had tried to be someone she really wasn’t to please people she didn’t even like. She had never been able to develop a genuine identity because of this.

 

God, she was so, so fucked up.

 

“What are _you_ scared of?” she asked Jason.

 

If she’d caught him off guard, he didn’t let it show. In fact, it seemed as if he had been waiting for her to ask him that.

 

“I’m scared of all those things you mentioned.”

 

She thought he might say that. They were a lot more alike than anyone would have believed. So different when you took a first glance at them, so similar when you got to know them deeply. The problem was no one had ever taken interest in any of them long enough to want to get to know them. They hadn't been given the chance. They hadn't known they had a right to ask for one, either.

 

And so the fucked up kids had grown up and become fucked up adults. No big deal. It happened all the time. The big deal was that they had met each other. Now they had no fucking idea what to do with this, or with themselves, or with their constantly evolving relationship. But at least they were in this together. They were as scared and confused and mesmerized by it all, and that had to count for something. It was better than what they were leaving behind: a lifetime of fighting their inner monsters unaided and alone.

 

Now at least they had each other to fall back on.

 

“What do you reckon we should do about this?” Tahani hoped he had any ideas, because her mind was blank. The waves of relief washing over her were actually making her want to be sick, so trying to come up with anything useful was futile. Her whole body was shutting down after having gone through hell in a span of fifty minutes. Her attacks were always this exhausting, and in their wake she always felt so fucking weak.

 

“Well, you said you felt like you’ve never had any friends. I hope you know that I can be your friend.”

 

“I know,” she sighed. It wasn’t the answer she wanted to hear, though. Her question was aiming for something different, but she was not going to push for more. He’d made it pretty clear that he had trouble with words and that he was better at doing things than saying things. She was going to accept and respect that. “You are my friend. You are so much more than that to me, Jason…”

 

And, as if the possibility had just occurred to him, as if he thought this was the greatest, most brilliant idea in the world, he added:

 

“Or I could be your husband!”

 

At first she thought she had not heard him well. He had to be kidding, right? It had to be a joke. He couldn’t be… No, no. He surely wasn’t... Or was he? Was it possible that this was actually happening? She fought the urge to pinch herself in the arm to check she wasn’t having one of those really vivid dreams.

 

“Did you just propose to me while I'm locked in the bathroom in my underwear and you're sitting on the floor on the other side of the door?” Did he understand what he had just done? The experience was so bizarre, so surreal… She pinched her arm just in case. It hurt a lot, but at least now she knew she wasn’t dreaming. Apparently, Jason was the kind of guy that thought it was alright, maybe even romantic, to propose to a woman he’d been seeing for less than three months during a situation like this one. As it turned out, Tahani was surprisingly OK with that. If one was to think about it, it kind of suited them.

 

_Talk about fucked up kids._

 

“Does it help if I tell you I'm also in my underwear?”

 

Feeling herself getting more and more restless, Tahani asked again:

 

“Did you just propose?”

 

“I thought we liked each other.” Jason sounded really confused. To him, it didn’t matter how long you’d known someone: sometimes you just have to follow your gut and see where it leads you. Some things don’t need that much thinking through, really. The heart wants what it wants, right? And the heart is rarely wrong. He knew he would never like someone as much as he liked Tahani, and it seemed to him like she felt the same way about him (maybe he’d misunderstood her? He wasn’t sure.) Why waste time?

 

“Jason, it takes a lot more than liking each other to decide to get married. You just don't ask a friend to marry you--”

 

He interrupted her again:

 

“Tahani, maybe I'm way off base here but I think we’ve already agreed that we’re past the friendship stage.”

 

Her heart was beating so hard, so fast, her ribs were hurting. She felt about to explode. She needed to know whether he was serious or not.

 

“Do you really mean it?”

 

She held her breath while she waited for an answer.

 

“Wanting to be your husband? You're fresh, dope, you have really nice legs, and really nice hair. You have really nice everything. And I love spooning you. I also love having sex with you. You're the most awesome person I've ever met, even more awesome that Glittering Michael. Who wouldn't wanna be married to you? I think you don't give yourself enough credit, doll.” And then he said the very same words he had said to her the night they’d met, the words she’d repeated like a mantra during the months that followed her NDE. The words that had, in some way, saved her life. The words she’d held onto while trying to figure out what to do next, where to go, how to get out of the spotlight: “Be nicer to yourself.”

 

“Jason?” she was on the verge of tears _again._

 

“Yes?”

 

She stood up and opened the bathroom door. It took him by surprise, but in a second he was on his feet and facing her. She did not care that her face and eyes were swollen and puffy, she didn’t care that they were both in their underwear. Her hair was probably a mess, too. She let him see her like that, all vulnerable and emotionally exposed, and she felt in peace with that. This was the one person that had never asked her to pretend to be anything she wasn’t. This was the one person she could be herself with, the one person that had no problem telling her when she made a mistake.

 

This was it, right? It definitely felt like _this was it_.

 

But instead of the words she was dying to say, the words he was dying to hear, she just blurted out:

 

“I know you're trying to quit, but I could really use a cigarette right now.”

 

He still had half a packet in his bag. And so they ended up sitting on the bathroom floor, both still in their underwear, passing a cigarette back and forth between them. Just like that fateful night in Cleveland (only that now Tahani knew what to do with the smoke). They stayed in companionable silence for half an hour, her head resting on his shoulder, her mind going a mile a minute. He didn’t repeat his question, didn’t bring up the subject. Jason knew she was thinking about it -- he could almost hear the wheels turning inside her head. He’d be patient with her, and if her answer was no then it would be OK. He held her close to him and stroked up and down her arm, focused on the sound of her breathing, of how wonderful it felt to be so close to her. He kept her eyes closed, trying to commit these sensations to memory in case he ever did something stupid that resulted in losing her (although he would try his best not to.)

 

And then Tahani said:

 

“I think we should do it.”

 

What would her parents and her sister think if they could see her, agreeing to marry a guy from Jacksonville, Florida, that she’d known for less than six months? What any of her acquaintances from London would say about her decision to let her feelings take complete control over her life? She was shocked to realize that she did not care. Her parents were dead, her sister had no interest in staying in touch, and the people belonging to the snobbish circles she used to hang out with wouldn’t spare two seconds on her anyway. She’d wasted too much of her life contemplating others’ opinions. She was sick and tired of it, as sick and tired as she was of everything else she’d ever done to impress others.

 

She was not going to overthink this. They’d both agreed that being together was full of firsts. Well, she had never been so sure of anything. Ever. She wanted him, she wanted this. There wasn’t much room left for second-guessing. She deserved to be happy, and Jason made her happy. It was as simple as that.

 

“Really?” The huge grin she saw on his face made the butterflies return to her stomach.

 

“Why not? We're practically living together as it is.” She took his hand in hers and looked him in the eyes. God, he really was gorgeous with his hair all disheveled and those shiny black eyes. “I never want you to go, you know? Every time you say you have to go home, I always want to ask you to stay. So stay. Don't go back there. I mean, yes, go back later today to get all your stuff. But don't sleep there tonight. Move in with me. We make each other happy, don't we?” She’d never imagined she would one day get engaged -- let alone under these circumstances. But everything about it felt so right, and she was so desperately in love with him. She could not see that maybe they needed to take things slower. “What does it matter if we've only known each other a couple of months? To hell with what most people would consider proper or even sane. Let's do it. Let's get married.”

 

He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her, and she couldn’t help but to think back to that night a month or so ago, the weekend of Kamilah’s wedding, when he’d been over to keep her company and distract her from the misery she’d been feeling. They’d had their first kiss that night -- somehow somewhere deep inside her Tahani had know that would be her last first kiss, ever.

 

“I promise I'll be a good husband,” he said as he stroked her cheek, foreheads pressed together. Their faces were so close their eyelashes were brushing. “I'm sorry I don't have a ring to give you. I didn't really think this through. I wasn't planning on asking you to marry me when I came over yesterday.”

 

“I don't care about a ring,” It was true. She didn’t. “We can get one later.”

 

“Or we could get matching tattoos!” He suggested this with the same glee he did everything else. Tahani laughed at this, but she didn’t tell him it was a bad idea. They could decide on rings or tattoos later, she supposed.

 

“Jason?”

 

Now she cupped his face in her hands.

 

“Yes?”

 

He looked expectant, as if he knew what was about to happen, what was about to come. The world could have ended right there and then, everything on Earth could have gone extinct or disappeared, and neither of them would have noticed a thing, so focused as they were on each other.

 

She took a deep breath, determined to pay attention to every single detail about this special moment (albeit ridiculous and bizarre).

 

“I love you.”

 

There it was. She finally said the words she’d been dying to say.

 

Both their hearts skipped a beat as he said:

 

“I love you, too.”

 

As they snogged on the bathroom floor like two teenagers, it did not occur to any of them that they were rushing things. It all felt natural, and logical, as if they’d done this before. Every time they were together, it always felt like they’d been there, in each others’ arms, a million times. Blinded by love and happiness and a sense of finally belonging somewhere with someone, it did not occur to them that they could have confessed their love for each other in a healthier, more logical way, and that not everything in life necessarily had to be black _or_ white. It didn’t occur to Tahani that love could not cure all, and that perhaps it was time she seeked professional help instead of relying on what others saw in her to feel complete, to have a sense of fulfillment. That maybe seeing life the way Jason did, always living in the moment, never caring for consequences, wasn’t any better than overthinking every single decision and obsessing over things. That neither of those obsessions would go away now simply because they had gotten engaged and confessed they loved each other. That being impulsive all of a sudden was not the antidote to a life that so far had been devoted to pleasing everyone in spite of her own interests and desires.

 

In that moment, everything they needed was right there and then, on that bathroom floor, and they were so high on love they could not imagine it not being the answer to every question, every prayer, the balsam for every wound they had ever had inflicted on them by their families, their ‘friends’, or the society they lived in. They were perfect for each other, and no one else would ever understand what it was like between them. And of course it didn’t matter that two weeks before this they’d gotten into a huge argument because he’d hidden things from her -- not to mention that after that incident they had spent one week without even speaking, both of them suffering and sulking and missing each other terribly. And yes, on this very Sunday morning one minute they’d been fighting and she’d locked herself in the bathroom because she was terrified he did not want her the same way she wanted him, and next thing they knew they were engaged and laughing between kisses and moving in together. But that was what young love was all about, wasn’t it?

 

Fucked up kids, indeed.


	7. Chapter 7

_hollywood infected your brain_  
_you want the kissing in the rain_  
_i've been living in a movie scene_ _  
puking_ _american_ _dreams_

 

**marina and the diamonds, “hollywood”**

 

Tahani Al-Jamil and Jason Mendoza got married on May 11th, 2016, four days after her thirtieth birthday and less than ten days into their engagement. The ceremony was very simple -- she wore her favourite flowery sundress, he read her a poem he’d written especially for the occasion, and afterward they got tacos. They invited no one, told no one. His parents wouldn't have cared much about this, anyway. Hers were dead and probably looking down on the whole affair with utter disgust. Later that night as they laid naked in a tangle of limbs, the newlyweds agreed it had been the happiest day of their lives.

 

As a young girl, Tahani had found the subject of weddings an anxiety-inducing one. Mr. and Mrs. Al-Jamil had been nothing if not brutally honest on the matter: the only men and women worth marrying are those who one day will be sitting on a throne. Sadly for them, the Al-Jamils had soon realized they wouldn't live to see their daughters joined in holy matrimony with anyone they approved of. Kamilah was too precious for any prince or princess to deserve her, and Tahani lacked whatever extraordinary qualities a heir apparent supposedly sought. What would they think if they could see what they'd become? Tahani guessed they would be pleased for a change. Both sisters had lived up to their expectations, so to speak: Kamilah had married herself, and Tahani a hip-hop dancer from Jacksonville, Florida. At least they had married out of love.

 

Neither Jason nor Tahani had wanted to make a big deal out of things. He'd moved in with all of his stuff -- mostly clothes, video games, and Jaguars memorabilia --  the same Sunday they decided to get married. By Monday night they’d already gotten into an argument because he wanted to spend the money he’d been saving for community college on an engagement ring that Tahani insisted she did not want or need.

 

“But I want to get you something nice!” He’d practically pouted, and she’d had a hard time not laughing. He looked adorable when he pouted.

 

“And I won’t let you spend every single penny you’ve got to your name on some ridiculously high-priced item at Tiffany’s! I mean it, Jason,” she’d felt the need to make sure he understood she was being serious. “I told you, I don’t want a big, expensive reception. And I already have enough jewelry as it is. I used to care about those things, and you know where it led me. The only thing being on the spotlight brought me was misery. I’m not that person anymore. Do you want to get me something nice? Get us a marriage license, then. The sooner, the better.”  

 

Intense makeup sex had followed, and two hours later a date had been agreed on. They had each picked a number between 1 and 15 (“But it can’t be 7. I don’t want our anniversary and my birthday to be on the same day,” Tahani had said) and then they’d flipped a coin. Wednesday morning she'd filled in the paperwork to have the 11th off work citing personal reasons. By Friday the museum's Human Resources department had granted her request, and Saturday noon her body had been sore in all the right places after a very satisfying morning in bed.

 

Tahani would have never imagined planning her wedding would take less than a week -- no guest list or seating arrangements (thank God, really -- last thing she'd heard Lady Gaga and Madonna were still not on speaking terms with each other), no dealing with florists and caterers and string quartets, no shopping for a designer gown in Paris or Milan, no bachelorette spa-weekend at the Swiss Alps with Emma Watson and Jenna Coleman. None of the things she'd been raised to believe were substantial. And she had been completely fine with that.

 

The subject of rings had come up once more the weekend before the wedding. The woman she'd once been would have wanted nothing short of spectacular -- after all, her sister had given herself a diamond ring that had once belonged to the great Elizabeth Taylor (or so she’d heard her coworkers say). Now those things didn’t matter so much. But Jason had insisted it was important they exchanged something -- besides their vows -- and Tahani had refused to have that something be Pokemon cards. In the end, they’d chosen golden bands with the words _Handmade heaven_ engraved on them. It had been Tahani's idea.

 

“I tell you all the time, darling, Heaven is a place on Earth with you.” His head had been resting on her stomach and she’d been running her fingers through his hair. “You make it so. And one time you said to me that I’m your good place. What place is better than Heaven? I think it fits us perfectly, don’t you?”

 

When the day came, when Jason looked at her and told her every time she kissed him he knew deep inside in his soul that he’d chosen her a million times before, in a million different lives, and promised he would always choose her, no matter what, her eyes filled up with tears. She felt so happy, so complete, so _loved_. It could be heard in her voice as she thanked him for being her best friend, the only person she could truly be herself with, and for showing her there was so much more to life than appearances. How could she not love him the way she did? At this point, neither of them could imagine a world in which they did not love each other.

 

Another thing Tahani would have never guessed as a young girl was that there would be no professional photographers (let alone members of the international press) to document every moment of such a special day. They took a lot of selfies in front of the courthouse -- most of them holding up their marriage license or showing off their matching wedding rings to the phone camera -- and then Jason asked another couple to get a picture of him and ‘his wifey’, but that was it. As they had lunch on a bench in Central Park, they went through the pictures and picked the ones they’d print to hang around the house.

 

“I can’t believe we got married,” she whispered that night as she snuggled closer to him. She laced her fingers with his. Ever since that morning, she couldn’t help but look at their hands every ten minutes, the smile on her face so big her cheeks hurt. It was as if she needed to reassure herself that yes, this was real, they’d gone through with it. He kept bringing her hand up to kiss the ring -- she supposed he also needed to be reassured that this wasn’t a dream. She didn’t mind in the slightest.

 

“I can’t believe we got tacos,” Jason said, spooning Tahani from behind and burying his face in the curtain of long, silky hair that he loved so much. He breathed in her perfume and held her even tighter -- he hoped his body language spoke loud and clear: he never wanted to let her go. Her skin was warm and she smelled like strawberries.

 

“That was your favourite thing about today?” Tahani asked, laughing. “Getting tacos?”

 

“Mmmh.” His lips brushed her neck and curled into a smile.

 

She decided to act a little offended on purpose, tease him a bit. After all, their bantering usually ended in great sex.

 

“Really? Getting married to the love of your life,” she still was not over him calling her _that_ in his vows, and the memory alone was enough to get her heart beating faster “is a simple anecdote compared to having Mexican food at Central Park for lunch?”

 

“Well, those tacos were really good.” He was just messing with her, she knew. “What was your favorite thing about today?”

 

She didn't have to think twice.

 

“Everything.”

 

They found a routine. They both threw themselves into their careers as much as into their relationship. They enjoyed what they did immensely. Jason was thriving under Tahani's encouragement, finding new interests, new ways to channel his creativity. In addition to his performances in the off-Broadway scene, he began teaching hip-hop at several dance studios in Soho, Brooklyn, and Queens. She was so proud of him and made a point of telling him just how much as often as possible. He tried so hard, worked so hard -- she could see how much he wanted to succeed, how much he wanted to be better every day. Just like Jason wished Tahani could see how awesome, how talented and valuable she was, she wished he would see the same qualities in himself instead of concentrating mostly on all his previous failed attempts.

 

One day they had been talking about things they wished they’d done or hadn’t done, Jason lamented all the time he’d wasted trying to make it as a DJ when it had been clear from the start that his demos were terrible -- everyone had told him so, but he’d refused to listen, convinced that he could be as amazing as Acid Cat, perhaps even more so. But it had not been worth his while, and the only thing he’d succeeded at had been getting into trouble and proving to everyone who thought he was an idiot that yes, they were right.

 

“I don’t care what they fooled you into believing -- it’s not true. None of it is true. You’re so smart, and so kind, so intuitive and imaginative and full of potential…” Tahani ran her fingers through his hair as she spoke. “Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. You’re barely 28, you’re still so young. Don’t think of it as time you wasted -- think of it as lessons learned.” At least that’s what Tahani found helpful when she herself woke up with her head filled with these dark, depressing thoughts. “You’re going to do great things, my love. You’ll see.”  

 

“How can you be so sure?” he’d asked.

 

“I just am,” she’d shrugged her shoulders. “When you look at me, I just know it. There’s this ‘superstar’ vibe to you that’s undeniable… Well, at least to me there is. Don’t worry about it, darling, and give yourself some time. You’ll make it, I promise.”

 

“I already feel like I made it big time since I married you.”

 

“Oh, you do?” she asked teasingly, straddling him on the couch and biting on his earlobe in a playful fashion. “Then when you’re famous you can tell everyone I was always your number one fan.”

 

A couple of days later they were walking back home hand in hand after a night at the movies when he told her something that made her melt and fall in love with him all over again.

 

“I don’t think I want to be famous and all that stuff anymore.” He sounded puzzled by his own words, but there was also a certainty in there that was unmistakable, like when you come to a realization when you were least expecting it and the more you think about it, the more sense it makes.

 

“You don’t?”

 

“Nah. Dancing with Glittering Michael’s troupe is cool, and teaching kids is also cool. But I don’t need to play on the big leagues to be happy.”

 

_Again with the sports metaphors._

 

“I’m already happy with what I’ve got. I’d still like to give community college a shot,” he admitted. “Could be worth it. But I don’t think I want to be like a celebrity or something anymore.”

 

“You know I’ll support you whatever you choose, dear.”

 

They walked in silence for a couple more blocks, and when they reached the doorstep of their building they both said at the same time:

 

“Am I still your superstar?”

 

“You’re still my superstar.”

 

She laughed, and he kissed her, and they hurried inside and had a slow, excruciatingly good fuck against the hallway wall -- they barely made it to the bedroom these days, and both of them found shagging half-dressed was much more erotic than taking off all of their clothes anyway.

And so days turned into weeks, and when their first month anniversary came Tahani got him tickets to see Twenty One Pilots play at Madison Square Garden in August. Jason got ‘Congratulations beautiful’ in Arabic tattooed on his left pectoral, just above his heart.  

 

They celebrated his 29th birthday and their second month anniversary in July -- Tahani got them a room at the Four Seasons and told him to think of a fantasy he’d like fulfilled. He got her a tight-fitting Tennessee Titans football t-shirt and asked her to wear it to bed. The metaphor was not lost on Tahani, and considering how much fun they had and how sore they were both feeling the following morning, the fantasy worked for her as much as it did for him.

 

Three months into their marriage they took a one week vacation to Disney World, and then they spent a weekend visiting Jason’s childhood friends in Jacksonville -- Tahani beamed every time he introduced her as his wife. She wasn’t sure they had successfully talked Pilboi out of investing in what sounded like a terrible business involving energy drinks and spray deodorant, but at least they’d convinced him not to quit nursing school.

 

Jason himself had begun looking into community college courses with Tahani’s help. There was a video game design and programming one that had caught their eye. Jason was always telling Tahani about ideas for video games he'd had since childhood (some sounded ridiculously elaborate and complicated, but some others were actually good.)

 

“Do you want to hear this new video game idea I’ve got?” he’d always say, usually late at night when they were already in bed.

 

No matter how tired she was, no matter how close to falling asleep she’d been before he asked, her answer was always yes.

 

“The main character is an angel -- I'm naming him Michael after my agent,” he told her one night. “But you don't get to play as Michael. The player is some random person, like a girl from Arizona who works at a call center or something. Or some boring, nerdy teacher with glasses, and woolen vests and dress shirts. Maybe normal people like you and me. Well, not like you -- you're not normal, you're extraordinary.” She laughed at it, glad that they didn’t have any lights on so he wouldn’t see her blushing furiously. She kissed him on the nose and let him keep on talking. “So you get to play a normal person that has died and gone to Heaven. You customize your house, and there's this awesome lady robot who is super hot and super nice and she helps you with everything you need. But then the game starts glitching and you think it's your computer being crap or something, but the game is actually glitching _on purpose_ \-- like, you’re playing this cool level where you get to fly, but then giant giraffes and shrimps appear and you have to fight them.” The more he talked, the more excited he sounded. “And then you get an anonymous letter, and you find out you don't belong there in Heaven -- they thought you were someone you're not! So these demons start to chase you to drag you down to Hell, and you escape on a train to a house in the middle of nowhere and other weird places like a pancake house where the pancakes try to eat you, that sorta stuff. But Michael the angel finds you and offers to help you, and there are more levels where you team up with Michael, the lady robot and other players in your situation to try to get to a magical portal. And you always _almost_ get there, but every time you’re close to finding the portal something happens and you’re set back three levels. So you get suspicious of Michael and you find out that he’s been on it all along!  He’s actually a demon, and he’s been torturing you the whole time making you believe he was on your side!”

 

Jason went silent, waiting for her to say something. Tahani took a minute to ponder everything he had just told her. The concept was nothing like anything she’d heard before -- not that she was an expert on video games, but being married to and living with Jason meant being exposed to a lot of information on the subject she wouldn’t have had otherwise. He’d even taught her how to play a couple of them, which were fun. They usually played against each other and made bets (it was amazing how randomly they went from ‘loser does dishes for a week’ to ‘winner gets to pick lube flavour for a month’). When they’d been in Jacksonville, she’d heard him saying to his friends that ‘his wifey was a Guitar Hero pro’ and that she could give him ‘a run for his money on anything Nintendo’ -- she couldn’t help but beam with happiness and pride every time she remembered that.

 

“So what do you think?” Jason asked nervously.

 

“It’s interesting,” Tahani heard him sigh in relief. “Disturbingly so. It reminds me a lot of Sartre’s play _No Exit._ "

 

He had no way of knowing if this was a good thing or a bad thing.

 

“But do you like it?”

 

“Yes! Yes, of course, darling. It’s… brilliant.” There was no better word to describe the idea he’d just pitched her. “You’re brilliant!”

 

He’d never looked so proud of himself, and she’d never felt so utterly, madly in love.

 

Four months after the wedding and with the fall fast approaching, he began second-guessing his decision to pursue an education.

 

“I'm not sure I can do this,” he confessed when he asked her if she really thought he should go back to school in September.

 

“Why not?” She was excited for him, and she thought he was too. His voicing his insecurities came as a surprise, especially after witnessing first-hand just how much confidence he'd gained in the last couple of months. Teaching had done wonders for Jason's self-esteem -- the knowledge that there were people, mostly teenagers, looking up to him because they regarded him as talented, as worth listening to when he spoke about dancing and explained how he could feel the right movements in his flesh and bones when the music was on, and that they would be able to feel it too if they listened hard enough, not with their ears but with their souls. He told her things about those kids -- a lot of them came from troubled households, had had complicated childhoods, and some of them were still struggling. They reminded Tahani a lot of the young girl she was once, and of the young boy she knew he had been. He was giving them something they could have used when they were that age: hope, a purpose, something to do with their time and their energy other than worrying about the future or channelling it all into unhealthy, self-destructive behaviour like both her and Jason had.

 

“What if I’m too dumb? What if it’s too hard?”

 

“It can be hard, I won’t deny it. If that’s the case, all you have to do is work harder. I know it’s easier said than done, sweetheart, but that’s the way it is. And I trust that you’ll give this your best. You’d have faith in me were the roles reversed, right?” He nodded. “Well, I have faith in you, my love.” She kissed him softly on the lips. “Be nicer to yourself.”  

 

Their fifth month anniversary fell on a Tuesday. They were both so busy with work (and, in Jason's case, his classes) that they only saw each other early in the morning and then very late at night. They fell asleep while attempting to engage in some light foreplay, and then laughed about it the next morning.

 

The following anniversary fell on a Friday. They ate take-out in their underwear and watched the _Back to the Future_ trilogy. Jason spent the whole weekend working on a project for one of his courses, Tahani sitting by his side with her own computer on her lap, running her fingers through his hair while she edited the first draft of an article she was writing for a fashion magazine.

 

That night when they caught a break, he rested his head on her lap and sighed. He was beaten, but he was satisfied. And so was she.

 

“Is our marriage what you imagined it would be?” she asked softly, lacing her fingers with his and looking at their wedding rings.

 

“Sex without condoms is a lot messier than I thought it'd be.” It was true, so much that one morning they were running late they ended up  having a 'quicky’ in the shower, as Jason had so delicately put it, so they wouldn't have to mind about changing the bedsheets. “But other than that, yes.” He made a pause, and then he asked her: “Is it what you thought it would be?”

 

“No,” Tahani answered truthfully. “It's better. More real.”

 

Jason sat up on the couch and looked at her with a quizzical expression on his face. So she elaborated: “The media we consume sells us this whole idea that a loving relationship must be perfect and fairytale-like. The more you suffer, the greater the reward in the end. They make it all so unnecessarily complicated, never show you the simple, every-day things. Hollywood is constantly infecting our brains with its narrative, and so we end up wanting things that only happen on the screen. Like Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard kissing in the rain on that final scene in _Breakfast at Tiffany's_.”

 

He had no clue what that movie was about -- eating breakfast at Tiffany's, he supposed. He didn't interrupt her, though.

 

“Real life is much less dramatic, but it doesn't make love any less magical or beautiful. Our life together is simpler than I could have imagined -- and that's why it's so much richer. I don't want the kissing in the rain, I want poking you on the arm when you're snoring too loudly because that means you sleep next to me every night. I want fighting over why Marmite is better than Nutella… It is!” She laughed at Jason's expression of disgust at the mention of Marmite. “I want us having to explain certain words to each other because we're from different countries. I want cuddling on the couch with you with a cup of tea and a heat pad when I'm on my period. They never tell you these things about marriage. As it turns out, they're all the best parts of sharing your life with someone you love.”

 

He grabbed the back of her neck to draw her face close to his, and then he kissed her, soft and slow, like those first chaste, awkward kisses they'd shared several months ago while sitting on that same couch, that spring afternoon when it had all begun. _Look where we are now,_ he thought. He had first crossed the threshold of the place that now was his home as nothing more than a friend. At least that's what they'd both assumed back then. But that friendship had never stood a chance, had it? They were better off as lovers, anyway.

 

“I agree with everything you just said, doll,” he told her when they pulled away. “But not the stuff about Marmite being better than Nutella. That's still gross.” She laughed. There was no point in arguing over this, she'd never convince him. “I wouldn't mind making out with you in the rain, though.”

 

“It’s never going to happen, darling. I'd never be caught dead with my hair wet in a public place.”

 

“I see you with your hair wet all the time.”

 

She laid down on the couch with her head on his lap.

 

“Because we're married and we live together and we have a fair amount of shower sex.”

 

“I'll get you in the rain one day, you'll see.”

 

This is the thing about Tahani Al-Jamil and Jason Mendoza: they were happy. They completed and bettered each other in ways they would have never guessed were possible. If the world was built for two as some say, then it only made sense that it'd been built for them to share together. Complex things can appear to be awfully simple when you're blinded by love.

 

They made one mistake, though: they fooled themselves into believing something like free will existed. They bought the idea that they were responsible for their own happiness, their ups and downs, their achievements and failures, and everything that came with it. They never, not for one minute, entertained the possibility that perhaps they were allowed to make their own choices as long as they did not interfere with a higher being's plans. Two puppets on a string. The life they were living could be stolen from them with just a snap of the fingers. It wasn't fair, but when you’re that much in love you tend to forget that nothing really is.

 

The night before their seventh month anniversary they went to bed together, fooled around a little -- light touches over their clothes, caresses that led nowhere -- and fell asleep in between kisses. She whispered _I love you_ , and he told her that he loved her, too.

 

When Tahani woke up the following morning, she was all alone. The right side of the bed was empty and cold to the touch. She took a shower, got dressed and had breakfast, same routine as always. She called a cab and waited impatiently -- she had important people to meet, important places to be, and important fundraisers to host. It was with great disgust that she saw the giant screen on Trafalgar Square counting down the days to Kamilah's next big achievement. In addition to everything she already was, now she'd also be the youngest person ever inducted into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame. Of course the media would be all over it -- they loved it when Kamilah was the first person to do this or the youngest person to do that. Tahani was so sick of it, she tried not to think about that. It was impossible, though. But she did try.

 

So she went on with her day, not knowing that by the end of the week she would travel to a place somewhere in the United States called Cleveland (it was amazing, the kind of behaviour some unfortunate comments by a stupid reporter could trigger). She didn't know how close she would come to dying, or that she had been dead and to hell once, or that she'd been saved from dying in one occasion and that by next Saturday it would have happened all over again.

 

And, of course, she did not know that Jason Mendoza existed.


	8. Chapter 8

_people are connecting,_

_don't know what to say_

_i'm good at protecting_

_what they want to take_

**marina and the diamonds, “the outsider”**

 

The dream is always the same. She’s had it for a few months now. She is walking down a corridor that has no end, which only seems to stretch out further and further from her starting point. There are doors on each side, thousands of them. All have golden plates with names engraved -- people she knows, or people she wishes she knew. Some are already dead. Is she dead, too? The possibility doesn’t scare her, but she is disappointed that anxiety extends even to death. Did she do this? Has she brought herself here? If the answer is yes, then it’s been for nothing. She still feels terribly sad.

 

She reads the names on every door and she’s upset she can’t remember who she is looking for. She keeps telling herself it will all make sense once she sees it. She thinks the right door may be the one at the end of the corridor. At least she's been taking clearer glimpses of it lately.

 

**flowersinmyhead**

But I always wake up before I can reach it.

 

She knew she should be talking about it with a professional. A psychiatrist, maybe. But she chose to share her deepest, most well-guarded thoughts with a stranger online. Perhaps it was the anonymity that made it so alluring. The person reading her words had no voice and no face, and neither did she. They were nothing but usernames to each other. And yet this friendship -- for lack of a better term -- sometimes felt more personal, more real, than the bonds she’d forged with people that existed outside the limits of a computer screen.

 

It had all begun during the days following her near death experience. Some gray-haired stranger had saved her from dying crushed under the weight of a statue made of solid gold. She'd ended up in hospital with a concussion. She'd almost died _in Cleveland_. Her whole life had flashed before her eyes and she had not liked most of what she'd seen. She had a panic attack upon waking in the ER, and the nurses had had to sedate her. Her parents would have been as ashamed as Tahani had been mortified. Growing up, she'd learned that feeling too much was frowned upon, and voicing her discomfort or dissatisfaction was not proper. So she'd gone on living a life she was unhappy with, thinking she was the worst yet acting like she was the best so no one in her circle would suspect she secretly wished she had died crushed by a giant object that embodied everything she always resented. No one had been there to tell her otherwise, so naturally it had been easier to fall back into bottling up her self-hatred while pretending to be… what exactly?

 

She never recognized the person smiling in the magazine covers, the supposedly selfless philanthropist reporters wrote about. Yes, technically it was her, but it wasn't her. She'd played the part so expertly for so long, she didn't know how to be anything else. She knew what she wasn't, but she had no idea who she truly was or wanted to be. She'd turned out a poorly made copy of her sister -- and even that had not been enough to please her parents. Nothing she had ever done mattered, for they'd always seen her as a disappointment. That's what she really saw every time she looked in the mirror, every time they showed her shots for magazine articles -- and so she too believed that she was lesser than. She'd never earned her parents’ respect, why should she respect herself?

 

Almost a year after their passing, she still couldn't break the circle of self-abuse they'd pushed her into from an early age. Staring right into the face of death had changed little about her ways. It had only served to embarrass her further and prove just how much everyone thought Kamilah was godlike, and how little they all cared whether Tahani was alive or six feet underground. But what good would it do to reflect upon that subject? It wouldn't be worth her while, surely. Her parents had been right to teach her not to show weakness, and the nurses had been right to administer a sedative.

 

They had also insisted she see a psychiatrist. But she believed there were certain things you simply did not talk about. Depression and anxiety were among them, so she only mentioned having trouble sleeping or letting work overwhelm her sometimes -- she did host events for important charities and helped raise millions for noble causes. She left with a prescription for Xanax.

 

By the time Tahani was discharged, all raw emotion had been repressed.  

 

The dreams started soon after that.

 

**flowersinmyhead**

I feel so sad when I wake up. Like I'm missing something. Like I've just lost someone important to me. I have this knot in my stomach, and my eyes and throat hurt from how much I try not to burst into tears. But I don't know how much longer I'll be able to hold it inside me. What frustrates me the most is that I can't even understand why! And it's not only the dreams. Lately the oddest things have been making me feel awfully unstable.

 

She’d found this page by chance after weeks of searching online about recurrent dreams and their meanings. The Google algorithm had suggested it based on her browsing history. She’d taken a look out of curiosity at first, checking it on and off, but had soon become interested enough in the subject to do it several times a day. Not only did people share and discuss different analysis and sources of information, they also wrote about their very own experiences. There were users from all over the world -- Russia, Italy, South Africa, Germany, Japan, Argentina. They came together in their need to connect with others who knew exactly what it was like -- closing one's eyes with absolute certainty of what was to come next, but no explanation for it whatsoever. It was fascinating, really, the amount of weird, impossible things the human mind could come up with when left alone to wander in the dark. Some were shocking, even disturbing, and Tahani felt thankful she didn't feel chased or terrified in hers -- walking down an endless corridor trying to find someone she didn't know sounded infinitely better than what other people’s unconsciousness put them through every night.

 

But she'd never posted anything herself, not even commented on what the others were talking about. She hadn't even signed up for an account during those first few weeks. You didn't need one unless you wanted to write your own entries or interact with others. And at the time she'd wished to do neither. What could she have said? Even if she did find it interesting to read other people's posts, she didn't feel like any of those experiences had something in common with hers other than their happening inside their heads while they were sleeping.

 

Tahani had told herself several times that spending so much time pondering on it wouldn't help, that it would only cause the dreams to become even more frequent. And yet she hadn't stopped browsing that website. She kept coming back, day after day, kept reading old discussion threads, using filters to find posts with certain keywords, secretly convinced that her dreams couldn't be the only ones with these… peculiarities.

 

And so one day she stumbled upon the post that would change her life in a way that even coming face to face with death hadn’t been able to.

 

r/RecurrentDreams - 178d - u/theoutsider

**Have you ever felt like you’re looking for someone in a dream but you don’t know who you’re supposed to find?**

_You’ve probably read my comments on other posts before and know me as that dickhead that’s always mocking people and telling them to stop smoking so much weed before bed. I totally understand if you spam this post with bullshit now, I’ve kinda earned it. But I need to write somewhere about a recurrent dream I’ve been having for months now. And since I’m not on speaking terms with lots of my friends and the ones I’m on speaking terms with would never take this seriously, I figured a bunch of strangers on the internet would have to do._

 

_The dreams aren’t always the same, although two or three situations are more recurrent than others. The one thing they all have in common is that I’m looking for someone that I can’t find. From what I’ve been reading here, it’s not unusual for people to dream they’re searching for something that never turns up, or that they forget to pick up their kid at school. Or they lose their grandma in a mall parking lot. My dreams are different._

 

_What’s so maddening about this is that I’ve no idea who I’m looking for or why. I just know I need to find them, and soon. It’s very frustrating, and when I wake up I often feel upset… and kinda sad, I guess._

 

_Has this happened to anyone here? Does anyone know what it means?_

 

_If you're here to troll me, you can suck my nonexistent dick._

 

_Peace!_

 

Those words -- albeit very different from the ones she would have chosen had she been the one doing the writing -- expressed exactly what Tahani felt every morning upon waking. That was what she had been looking for all these weeks: someone who could understand not what it was like to have a weird recurrent dream, but the dream itself and how it left her feeling.

 

Tahani Al-Jamil would never confess to this, but **theoutsider** was the reason why she finally joined Reddit. She downloaded the app on her phone, signed up for an account, chose a username and a password. And then did the one thing she often tried to avoid, the one thing that had resulted in three failed relationships and no real friendships so far: she attempted to connect to another human being, even if this person was a stranger who could be sitting anywhere in the world staring at a computer screen. But Tahani and this stranger had something in common.

 

The first message she sent to **theoutsider** was very short, very simple.

 

**flowersinmyhead**

It happens to me too.

 

She didn’t have to wait long to hear back from them.

 

**theoutsider**

Cool, I thought I was the only one.

 

And then:

 

**theoutsider**

Wanna talk about it?

 

That's how it began, this sort of friendship between the two of them. It was awkward at first, but as soon as they started discussing their dreams it felt more natural.

 

Months later, she still knew very little about **theoutsider**. According to her Reddit profile, she was in her early thirties and from the United States, loved “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, and was terrified of clowns. It was all very random and impersonal, but it volunteered a lot more information than Tahani’s own profile, which only said ‘29, United Kingdom.’

 

They often messaged each other on the app in the morning and then late at night -- times varied, since they were on the same hemisphere but different continents. To anyone else it would have seemed that they were going through the same topics over and over again -- and yes, they actually were. But it was healing, and freeing, and Tahani had never felt so heard, so understood in her entire life. They rarely talked about anything else, but their conversations were enough to help her through the anxiety and anguish in a way no amount of Xanax known to mankind ever could.

 

It was ten to midnight now and Tahani was telling **theoutsider** about how frustrating it was to see the door more clearly than ever but being unable to reach it or figure out who was supposedly waiting for her on the other side. She'd gone to bed early that evening, but now she was awake after another failed attempt to find this person she did not know, had never met, but whom, for some impossible to explain reason, she missed with every inch of her heart, body and soul. She'd been so bloody close this time. So she'd grabbed her iPhone from the night table to write to **theoutsider** about it. They often did that -- in fact, that same morning Tahani had woken up to a message from her telling her about a dream that involved iguanas, puppies and a beautiful creature half woman, half Centaurus that had really turned her on.

 

Her friend -- there really wasn't a better term -- replied right away.

 

**theoutsider**

Oh man, that sucks. I guess it still yours makes more sense than that dream I had for months about the killing shrimps and giant giraffes. I was in my PJs in that one. I understand what you say about being frustrated. But you know what? I think a good crying session is long overdue, girlfriend. Make a playlist, blast it out, drink some cheap wine or vodka, whatever floats your boat. What do you listen to when you're feeling miserable?

 

**flowersinmyhead**

I've been listening to Lana del Rey a lot lately. And Lorde. And Florence Welch as well.

 

She decided not to mention that she knew those women personally.

 

**theoutsider**

There you go. Trash some stuff, too. Do you have any dishes that need replacing? Throw some at the wall. Trust me girl, that shit really is stress relieving.

 

**flowersinmyhead**

I don't think I'll go breaking any china, but maybe I'll make that playlist.

 

**theoutsider**

Oh I love breaking stuff. Breaking stuff is my fucking love time.

 

**flowersinmyhead**

I wish I could crack my head open and see where this all leads, what it all means. Why are we dreaming this? Why dream we're looking for people we don't even know? Why do I always wake up with this weight on my chest, this horrible sensation that something's been taken from me and I can't do anything to get it back?

 

**theoutsider**

Because the human brain sucks, that's why.

 

They chatted a bit more about bands they liked, and soon Tahani's eyelids began dropping of their own accord. She dreamt of nothing at first, but then she found herself walking down the corridor once again. But this time she didn't wake up right before reaching the door. The scenario changed abruptly, the dream morphing into something else entirely. She experienced a strong sense of deja-vu. She couldn't remember if she'd ever had this dream in the past, but everything seemed so familiar… And _he_ was there. Faceless and voiceless, yes, but somehow she had finally found him.

 

She woke up with a start, heart beating so fast her ribs hurt. The clock on her night table read 1:16 am. She opened up the Reddit app and sent another message to **theoutsider** \-- it was still early afternoon in the States.

 

**flowersinmyhead**

He was there, I was sitting on his lap with my face buried in the crook of his neck. But when I tried to look up and kiss him, it was all over. It felt so real. And now something deep inside me tells me that I need to find him because he's meant to be my last first kiss.

 

Her hands were still shaking when her phone went off ten minutes later.  

 

There was only one sentence.

 

**theoutsider**

I think you should read this guy's post.

 

And then **theoutsider** sent her a link to something someone had posted the week before.

 

Tahani clicked on it, and the second her eyes scanned the text her tachycardia got worse. Whoever this man was, he had written an entry describing the exact same dream she had just had, but from his perspective. The woman in his dream had been faceless and voiceless, too, just like the man in hers. And the people in the dream had been sitting in their underwear on the bathroom floor as well.

 

It could not be a coincidence, could it? Too many details were identical to what she had just vividly seen inside her own head. He also said that he had been dreaming of this every night for the past month, and that he'd had other recurring dreams in the past that were too similar not to be linked somehow.

 

 _And the same thing always happens_ , it said at the end, _the moment I close my eyes in the dream and lean in toward her, I wake up. I know I need to find her because she's meant to be my last first kiss._

 

Now trembling head to toe, she clicked on his username and checked his profile page. He was 28, very invested in the Jaguars -- whatever that was -- and from Jacksonville, Florida. He'd joined Reddit on the same day he posted about his dream.

 

He had made only one other post in a subreddit about tattoos. Apparently he had gotten 'wasted’ and ended up with something in another language tattooed on his pectoral, right above his heart. He had no idea what it meant, but according to the tattoo artist, he had been very specific and had shown him on his phone a Google translate page with what he wanted. He was also asking if anyone knew what language it was and what it meant. There were pictures of his naked torso attached.

 

She knew what it meant. It was her own name in Arabic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so it begins again.


	9. Chapter 9

_i was just a kid_

_that you could not forgive_

_because it's harder_

 

**marina and the diamonds, “guilty”**

  


Every day began the same. He woke up at noon to the exact same song. He laid there for 3 minutes, 27 seconds and listened to the words, sung in a voice that reminded him of someone -- he just didn't know who it reminded him of. He'd heard it one time he had been about to shoplift at Target. He didn't remember hearing it anywhere else before, but it’d made him feel weird. Someone with a wider vocabulary would have described these feelings as nostalgia or hopelessness. If he'd been asked to explain it, he would have said it was as if all the mini waffles in the world had just disappeared all of a sudden, or someone in Hollywood had announced they weren't planning to make any more _The_ _Fast and the Furious_ movies.

 

It all started after he almost died in that safebox -- talk about foolproof plans. Pillboi still didn’t know how Jason had managed to get out in the last minute. Jason himself had no idea. The door to the safe had simply opened right before he passed out. He didn't remember anything else, only that someone had called an ambulance and that he'd woken up in the hospital several hours later, oxygen mask still on his face. One of the cops assigned to the case told him he'd been lucky -- five more minutes in there and he wouldn't have made it. He also told him that they would 'have to let them go’, that they'd ‘gotten him off on a technicality’ -- some dumb rookie had filled in the wrong forms or something. He got Pillboi to promise him they would not to attempt any more robberies for at least two weeks or so. It didn't even last two days. That's when he heard the song at Target.

 

He left the store with empty pockets, sat in his (stolen) car and googled the lyrics. The singer was named Lily Allen -- it didn't ring any bells. He found the music video on YouTube and watched it twice, then (illegally) downloaded the song and played it over and over again for hours. It made him miss places he'd never been to, made his arms and hands itch in ways that had nothing to do with how much weed he'd been smoking lately. This, he knew, was different. He was mourning, a great sense of loss nestled right in the middle of his chest, the heaviest weight he'd ever had to carry. His heartbeat was offbeat and his thoughts sounded off key in his own head. The pain was almost unbearable -- perhaps only comparable to that time he'd eaten all those jalapeño poppers that had gone bad. He needed something, _craved_ it, but he didn't know what it was. It was frustrating and it made him desperate. The more he thought about it, the less sense it made.

 

Yet he listened on.

 

He always got a lump in his throat right when the chorus hit: _I don't want anything more / than to see your face when you open the door, / you'll make me beans on toast and a nice cup of tea / and we'll get Chinese and watch TV._ He didn't know why, either. He'd never had someone make him tea, or someone to make tea for. In fact, he had no idea how to make tea and had no clue what beans on toast were. And yet his whole body _ached_ when he thought of it -- the idea of loving a person so much that all you need to be happy is coming home and seeing them waiting for you at the door. Maybe that was what saddened him so much -- the things it described, that kind of simple, pure relationship where two people's worlds are so entangled you can't tell their endings and beginnings. He'd never experienced something like that, therefore perceived it as foreign and unreachable and perhaps even incomprehensible. He knew he wasn't cut for it, had never given it too much thought. Some people were born to love and be loved, just like others were born to be successful or famous or great. He supposed whoever had written the song was one of the few fortunate ones -- she was a recording artist, so it was safe to assume she was successful to a degree, and she was obviously famous. It also seemed like she knew exactly what it was like to have that kind of love in her life, the kind worth waiting for with a cup of tea. Some have it all and some have absolutely nothing. In Jason’s case, it was the latter. He had never minded, until now. The realization hit him hard, like a bullet to the head. And the more he thought about it, it just got worse.

 

But he listened on.

 

For some reason, this sort of obsession was as oddly comforting as it was maddeningly addictive. There was a beauty to it he couldn't quite figure out. All he knew was that, for some reason, he liked that it hurt; he wanted more. So he replayed it on loop and kept torturing himself. He fell asleep after a couple of hours.

 

Then he dreamed of _her_ for the first time.  

 

When he woke up, he couldn't take the pain he felt in his chest. He couldn't remember what he'd dreamed of exactly, only that he was waiting for a girl with long, thick strands of soft, dark hair. He never got to see her, but he knew that the moment she arrived he'd be happy. Complete. His body somehow kept hold of what he'd been feeling -- comfort and relief from knowing there was someone in the world that accepted him as he was, someone that _chose_ _him_ when she could have had anybody else. It was so real, he wanted to cry himself to sleep and see if he would have the dream again, and maybe this time he would get to see her, _hold_ her. His arms and hands itched more than ever, and the sense of loss was overwhelming.

 

The dreams became frequent. He got them more often if he listened to the song a couple of times before going to sleep. He soon figured out he could recall the details better if he listened to it when he woke up. Some of the things he heard and saw inside his own head didn't even feel like actual dreams -- they were like memories from a past life or something. They came at him when he was least expecting them, flashes of knowledge and emotion seemingly coming out of nowhere that left him shaken and missing _her_ \-- whoever she was, wherever she was-- even more. On the nights he smoked or drank too much he tried to convince himself all these things he was imagining were because of the booze and the drugs. But then he fell asleep and saw her --sometimes he even got to touch her arm or lace his fingers through hers-- and he woke up, heart beating faster, desperate, scared because he may not know a lot of things but he knew he couldn't be imagining love. How could it be possible to all of a sudden be imagining something that had never happened to him before? To be able to call it by name and easily identify it in the awful mess that was his head?

 

No, he had to be _remembering_ it. He was clueless as to how or why, but with each passing day he was more and more convinced that something wasn't normal.

 

Because how else could the rest be explained, the other weird stuff that had begun around the same time the dreams started? He'd turned to Google and read all about picking up strange habits like folding his clothes a certain way or buying a brand of soap that wasn't the cheapest (the fragrance reminded him of _her_ , and when had he started to use fancy words like that, anyway?) and craving foreign foods (how the hell did he know what Marmite was? And why did he want to eat spoonfuls right out of the jar so badly?) He wasn't satisfied with what he found, but he did read an interesting post on Reddit. This user talked about how he was losing his mind over similar things, urges that were out of character for him -- like eating junk food, watching YouTube compilations of people puking on roller coasters, or listening to Ke$ha and Rihanna (Jason didn't understand why this dude thought it was a bad thing. He loved Ke$ha and Rihanna.) Apparently, the guy had gone as far as seeing a shrink about it. But judging by how freaked out he still sounded, therapy wasn't working.

 

Jason related to a lot of what the guy described. He enjoyed reading his posts -- even though he was writing about complicated things, he made it all seem a lot less complicated -- except for that long post which had taken Jason two whole hours to read, and after like a million paragraphs the dude was all like 'of course the opposite may be true.’ But most of the stuff he talked about was dope. He mentioned lists that were useful to keep track of all the strange stuff, so Jason followed his example. He stole a notebook from a shop and began taking notes of his own weird experiences. In just a couple of weeks, he'd filled several pages with his messy handwriting. He thought a lot about sending a private message to this Reddit user but always decided against it. He had trouble choosing the right words, and this person seemed to be _big_ on words. It was intimidating, actually. So he kept on checking for new posts without interacting too much.

 

Of course, it all changed the morning after he got absolutely wasted. He'd gone to this new club in Jacksonville, drunk shot after shot of tequila, and woken up in some alley behind a tattoo parlor with a burning sensation on the skin of his chest. Head pounding, no memory of the last eight hours whatsoever, he was shocked to discover he'd finally done the one thing he had successfully avoided up to that point: he'd gotten a tattoo while pissed.

 

It was in a language he did not recognize (truth be told, he sometimes struggled to recognize words in English). He knew it was a language and not some random drawing because when he visited the tattoo parlor the following night the artist told him he'd shown up with a very specific idea in mind, and that he himself had shown him a Google translate page with what he wanted, then emptied his pockets right then and there on the counter. When the guys working there had asked him what it meant, he'd gone on a rant explaining how he'd lived 805 different lives so far and that in almost every single one of them he had fallen in love with a woman that was pretty and smart like Nala from _The Lion King_ , but someone had taken them away from each other and now they were trying to meet again in their dreams.

 

“Drunken nonsense,” the tattoo artist had said, shrugging. “We get it all the time. You wouldn't take no for an answer. We thought the story was pretty good. People can be really creative when they have one too many.”

 

He thought so too. It was too good to be something he'd just come up with. He wasn't that clever, nor were his ideas usually that twisted. No, there were too many weird things going on at the same time, and while most of them could have been explained away by how much he drank and smoked on a daily basis, there was something else, something he couldn't quite place yet, that linked them all together somehow, so that their being a coincidence became pretty improbable.

 

Jason Mendoza had been told many times that he wasn't the sharpest tool in the box. His teachers thought so. People in his neighborhood thought so. The social worker that used to visit them often when he was a child had suggested he needed professional help in more than one occasion. Even his friends thought he was dumb. His dad never stuck around long enough to notice something was wrong, and his mother was so tired after working double shifts at two different jobs that she was thankful that Jason never actually set the motel room they lived in on fire (he'd come close once, though.) Nobody took him seriously, and one hundred percent of the time they were right not to. It had never stopped him before. But now that all these weird things were happening and he couldn't understand how, or why, he wished someone did. He wished someone cared enough to listen, at least. But paying attention was hard, and in his experience, people didn't like to make an effort.

 

So he did what any reasonable adult in the twenty-first century would do: he finally signed up for a Reddit account and turned to the internet to find out if any strangers online had a clue what his tattoo meant. He also wrote a post on his dreams, just to get it out of his chest. With each passing night (or morning, or afternoon -- he slept a lot) it got more and more frustrating. Lately, he'd been seeing both of them sitting on a bathroom floor, their faces so close their eyelashes brushed. But her face was always a blur, and when he tried to pull her even closer and kiss her the dream ended abruptly and he woke up feeling terribly lonely, upset at life's unfairness.

 

A couple of days went by without anyone replying. Until one morning someone finally did. Someone that claimed to know what language his tattoo was in and what it meant. Most importantly, they claimed to be having the same kind of dreams he was having.

 

He may be way off base here, but he found it hard to believe it was all just a coincidence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this chapter was really, really difficult. But I felt it needed to be told from Jason's point of view. I would love to know what you all think. As always, thank you so much for reading.


	10. Chapter 10

_our hearts just burst like glass balloons_

_we let them fly too high_

_and_ _they shattered  too soon_

_are we the wrong damn people_

_in the wrong damn room?_

**marina and the diamonds, ‘hermit the frog’**

 

His username was **hermitthefrog** \-- he'd made a typo when he was setting up his account. It was clear from the beginning that they were very different. He lived in Jacksonville, Florida, a city Tahani had never heard of before but soon discovered was well known for a disturbingly high number of equally disturbing things. According to the zero-followers Facebook fan page he'd shown her, he considered himself a ‘pre successful DJ’ -- whatever that was supposed to mean -- and an entrepreneur (that word was misspelled, too.) He was unhealthily obsessed with a football team from his hometown, and worshipped someone named Blake Bortles. His vocabulary consisted mostly of words such as ‘dope’, ‘fresh’ and ‘cool’, and his dietary preferences, of foods such as jalapeño poppers and Cheetos -- whatever those were made of (she really, really had no desire to know.)

 

Under normal circumstances, she wouldn't have noticed him if he'd been the last man on Earth.

 

Of course the circumstances were anything but normal.  

 

This bloke lived in a godforsaken city on the other side of the world, did not speak a word of Arabic and had never set foot in an Arabic-speaking country, had nothing in common with her -- different lines of work, different belief systems, different upbringings, different social classes, different degrees of education, different _everything_. But somehow, he had woken up after a drunk night out with _her_ full name in her mother tongue tattooed on _his_ chest, _and_ they had been dreaming the exact same thing every night for weeks now. Neither of them had any idea why. The more they talked about it, the less it made sense. The more they learned about one another, the more strange coincidences they found: recent changes in his behaviour that he could not understand or explain were linked to things she enjoyed, and vice versa. They had both been experiencing inexplicable outbursts of sadness and nostalgia triggered by what they then discovered to be things the other person had some sort of connection with. It was as intriguing as it was terrifyingly weird.

 

But the weirdest part of it all was how much they genuinely liked each other. In the process of trying to understand what this madness was all about, they became friends. In spite of different timezones -- and any other differences easily spotted between the two of them -- Jason Mendoza and Tahani Al-Jamil spent several hours a day messaging each other compulsively. She fell asleep cradling her phone in her hand more times than she would have cared to admit, and the first thing she did upon waking every morning was checking the Reddit app to see if he'd sent her any new messages during the night, which, as she had explained to him several times before he finally got it, was his afternoon. He thought it was cool that she was five hours ahead of him, and would often greet her by asking _How's the future?_

 

They earned each other's trust (although Tahani suspected Jason was far more prone to trusting strangers online than it was safe.) They opened up about things they'd never shared with anyone before, poured out their souls, secrets and truths to one another as if they'd been friends forever. They understood what went on in the other's mind better than they understood themselves sometimes. Things they felt or thought and had always had trouble putting into words were a lot simpler to talk about all of a sudden. Tahani realized she had no filters, no self-control when it came to what she told this guy, and she couldn't find an explanation as to why it was so easy or why it felt so fucking right.

 

It was frightening.

 

It was wonderful.

 

He made her laugh and smile more than anyone she'd ever known, and she didn't feel like she had to pretend to be anything she really wasn't when she talked to him -- he always let her know when she was out of line or when she acted too condescendingly, he never judged her, never expected her to be someone she was not. One of the things Tahani liked most about Jason was that he knew exactly who he was and who he wanted to be and, most importantly, he knew _what he wasn't_ and had made his peace with that. His presence in her life, albeit virtual, was a refreshing, very much welcomed one. She hadn’t known how much she needed people like Jason and Eleanor (that was the name of Reddit user **theoutsider** , she’d learned recently) until strange circumstances and the wonders of the Internet pushed them together.

 

Sometimes she dared think maybe it was destiny. Most of the time, she’d rather not overthink it -- it was more than what her anxious mind could process. Another thing Jason was good at, she’d soon discovered, was calming her down every time she got anxious or upset every time they discussed different theories about whatever _this_ was and _why_ it was happening, and _why_ them. Jason came up with all sort of possible explanations -- all of them ridiculous, all of them improbable, but given how bizarre and uncanny the whole affair was, they couldn’t afford the luxury of ruling out even the most baffling ideas. So when he talked about aliens, she showed interest -- even if it was the last thing she would have believed in. And when he went on and on about past lives, she paid attention. When he shared posts on conspiracy theories, she read them. And then when it all became too overwhelming for her, he listened to her and helped her through her panic attacks, reminded her that it actually didn't matter what this was all about because at least the dreams were no longer unpleasant and the nostalgia and sadness had passed since they'd found each other, and who cares why he ended up getting her name tattooed on his chest -- maybe that was what needed to happen for them to become friends, which he thought was 'dope’ and 'cool’ and all sorts of positive adjectives Tahani would have never used in a sentence but that she related to nonetheless.

 

And as time went on, she accepted that they would probably never figure out this mystery, that this was meant to stay unsolved, and that the best thing that had come out of this had been her friendship with both Jason and Eleanor -- perhaps the only two real friendships she'd had all her life.

 

A few weeks later, the dreams stopped altogether. The conversations that could go on for hours didn't.

 

She fell in love with him so gradually she barely noticed. He fell in love with her so quickly and irrevocably it made him feel scared of something for the first time in almost twenty nine years. They never said a word to one another, too terrified to fuck things up, too convinced that they would never be good enough or deserving of the love they sought. He did send her his own cover of Calvin Harris’ _Feel So Close_ , but for someone who praised herself so much for having above-average intelligence, Tahani did not get the hint -- she just assumed he wanted to share his work with her, like friends often do.  (To be fair, he was just as clueless. She went out of her way to play words such as 'lovestruck’, 'relationship’ or 'enamoured’ during their online Scrabble games to no avail. He didn't seem to notice the pattern.)

 

They feared the same things -- _What if I'm worthless? What if it's one-sided?_  And besides, what could they do? They lived in fucking opposite sides of the world, didn't even know each other in person. So they suffered and longed in silence, and for their own ears only, they chewed on and spat out the words they didn't dare type and send. They told themselves it would go away eventually, as unexpectedly as it had come -- after all, that's what young love is all about, right? Their friendship would have to suffice, at least for the time being. And they were fine with that -- it was a lot more than what they thought they deserved, a lot more than what they ever believed they were going to have in this life.

 

It was as if Tahani had finally found some peace at last. It wasn't perfect, it wasn't ideal, there still were aspects of her personality that needed improving, but it was _better_ than what she'd known so far. It was pure, and it was _hers_ , and she was proud of the progress she'd made, how she was farther and farther from the spotlight, how she no longer tortured herself as much or as brutally about all the qualities that set Kamilah apart and that she lacked. How she was less obsessed with being number one. How she was starting to discover within her the ability to love others, even if she was yet to embrace that she was good enough to be loved. It was a slow process, but at least it had begun.

 

Then the email came.

 

She was working on the details of an upcoming fundraiser in the Netherlands when she saw the little counter in her email box go from (0) to (1). The subject was ‘WHAT WE OWE TO EACH OTHER’, all in caps lock. She almost, _almost_ ignored it -- she had no idea who it was from (it only said Michael and Janet, and she didn't know anyone who went by those names). Tahani supposed they were people from a charity asking her to host an event for them. She would eventually get to it, she thought, but she was too busy right now, too much on her plate as it was…

 

Yet something deep inside her compelled to stop what she was doing and open it anyway.

 

There she found the letter that would forever change the journey of her immortal soul.  

 

_Dear Humans,_

 

_The email you just opened will work as a trigger for you to remember what it has been like during all 803 versions of yourselves in hell -- or, as I like to call it, the Fake Good Place -- and the two versions of yourselves on Earth in parallel timelines where you didn't die as a consequence of your self-destructive actions. By now, your consciousness have probably integrated all the aforementioned versions and you remember absolutely everything that happened since the first time we met, from Attempt #1, where I was a demon pretending to be an angel with the sole purpose of torturing you, to Attempt #803, where I was an ally and, I hope, a friend that did everything in his power to help you by putting you back on Earth to rightfully earn enough points to be deserving of the Real Good Place._

 

_A lot has happened since we last saw each other and the Judge has allowed me one more attempt to save you from your painful destiny. The first timeline I created and sent the four of you back to was rebooted by Sean upon discovering that the Judge, Janet and I had gone behind their backs. The Judge then agreed to a second timeline that people from The Bad Place could oversee too -- this one.  Now, after what you humans call several months, and seeing how you all managed to find one another in spite of Sean's attempts to keep you apart, the Judge says she is ready to dictate her sentence. Your fates are sealed, and she will be summoning you shortly to tell you about her decision herself._

 

_Up to this point, the Judge hasn't shared her decision with either myself or Janet. She has, however, allowed me to contact you. She insisted that I should restore your memories of all the attempts your souls went through when I was conducting the task of torturing you, something I now look back on with utter disgust and shame. She also told me she would like to give you a couple of days to process this and, if you want to, say goodbye to each other -- which means she probably has decided to send you out on different paths (whether for better or for worse, I can only guess.)_

 

_We will keep on putting up a fight so that Sean and his people don't succeed in getting their way, and if it turns out the Judge has arrived to a decision we believe to be unfair, then we will not rest until we can appeal on your behalf. However, we are convinced that she has accepted our suggestion to reboot you once more and place you in a brand new timeline, to give you one more chance to get to the Real Good Place by your own means. I can't give you any more details, since for the time being we have nothing but conjectures._

 

_Just a couple of things before we say goodbye:_

 

  * __Eleanor, Janet says that bottle of vodka you've been looking for all this time is under your bed behind the box where you keep all your dildos and vibrators.__


  * _Tahani, Janet wants you to know your sister uses autotune on all of her songs and that she has not written a single one of them -- Beyoncé has, and Kamilah pays her royalties under the table._


  * _Chidi, stop worrying about the amount of almond milk you've consumed. The truth is, according to Janet's records, that you've consumed none. The coffee shop you usually go to tells its clients they serve almond milk and charge extra for it, but they don't. It's a scam. You've been drinking regular milk all along._


  * _Jason, Janet thinks you look cute in that new Jaguars t-shirt, although she prefers it when you're shirtless. She also thinks the tattoo makes you even hotter, something she did not think was actually possible._



 

 

_And we want all four of you to know that both Janet and I are thankful to have known you. You have made us better beings. You have helped us understand what it's like to be human. You have shown us love, hope and friendship. We will never forget you, and we will keep on trying to get you all back together somehow._

 

 _Now, one last piece of advice from us to you: get together if you can, say one last goodbye. You still have time before the Judge visits you (she wants to finish her_ Grey's Anatomy _marathon first.) We estimate she'll be done in what you humans perceive as three to four days. We're not sure -- it could be sooner. We'll try to stop anyone from Sean's entourage if they try to get to you first. We'll protect you with our lives. We owe you this much._

 

_Attached you will find a video with some highlights of all 803 attempts. I took the liberty to add what you humans refer to as ‘bloopers’ because I want you to get an idea of what a torture it was trying to torture you while you kept figuring it all out and forcing me to reboot you over and over again. I think I have been punished as much as you have, actually. Janet thinks it's served me right._

 

_We wish you all the best. Remember that we love you, and that we're sorry if we've ever let you down._

 

_Michael and Janet._

 

What happened next was very difficult to describe, so simple in its complexity that she barely noticed it happening. It's curious, how calm and unchanged the universe can feel even when your whole world is falling apart around you, stuttering to a halt. She could still hear traffic noises coming from Cromwell Road, life for others in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea carrying on unperturbed while hers changed forever.

 

The memories came back into her head as if they'd never really left at all -- and in a way, that was true. They'd been there all along, if only on a subconscious level, and now they had finally resurfaced. She remembered everything, the pain and the misery and the sorrow, hundreds and hundreds of versions of herself in fake paradise. She remembered the friendships she'd made -- Eleanor! Dear Eleanor from Reddit had been rebooted and tortured _with her_ and _as many times as she had_.

 

And she remembered Jason. She remembered how they had loved each other in almost every attempt, how they had found each other again the first time back on Earth, how she had not always been the one he fell for in the afterlife, how he had sometimes chosen someone else -- someone more beautiful, nicer, sweeter, better than her in every aspect, a super-powerful-girl-almighty type of person if you will. She remembered how Janet had sometimes been given the starring role in Jason’s life, how she, Tahani, had been jealous of the way he looked at her, the soft voice he used when he talked to her, the way he held and kissed her, suffering in silence without knowing that in seven hundred and ninety nine alternative realities she'd been on the receiving end of the love she craved so much.

 

With these revelations also came peace. She now understood what all those dreams had been about, her strong connection with Jason. It was the by-product of their punishment, the consequence of her narcissism and his recklessness -- a bond stronger than their flaws, more powerful than any magic tricks hell's finest had up their sleeves.

 

She had once read that humans need only two emotions: love and fear. Where there is fear there is no place for love, and where there is love then there is no place for fear -- just like there can't be darkness where there is light. You have to choose just one of them, you can't embrace both at the same time because one will end up swallowing the other whole. So when faced with this dilemma, standing in front of the road that laid ahead of her and contemplating its two forking paths, Tahani Al-Jamil made the conscious choice to embrace love. The worst thing that could happen after death had already happened to her, more times perhaps than to anyone in the entire history of humanity (except for Jason, Chidi and Eleanor.) She'd gone to hell over eight hundred times, she'd existed on two different timelines on Earth after having died in her original one. She was probably going back to hell soon. And yet now she knew something she hadn't before. Now she knew love. She was done with fear.

 

Feeling reassured and surprisingly empowered, she did what she deemed most logical in this situation and put the kettle on. She had to think fast -- and she had to act even faster. It was a quarter to five in the morning in the United States. Jason had sent her a good morning text three hours ago before going to bed himself. She had to call him, wake him up and tell him to check his email. And then together they would figure out the rest somehow, come (literal) hell or high water.

 

When she grabbed her phone, there were a couple of messages from Eleanor waiting for her.

 

**theoutsider**

I got the email. I remember everything. Chidi got in touch with me. He's booked me a flight to Australia. I'm going to get together with him to try to figure out how to get out of whatever they'll try to do to us. I also want to jump his bones.

 

How long would it take Eleanor to get to Australia? How long would it take Jason to go from Jacksonville to London if she bought him a ticket? Michael said they still had a few days before the Judge came for them. She had to have faith, believe that there still was time for them to be reunited.

 

She kept on reading Eleanor's message.

 

**theoutsider**

Listen, I'm not very good at this but we don't have much time and we've been through a lot together, so you probably know this is how I roll. I love you. You are the best, realest friend I have ever had. Also, you're the hottest person I have ever met, and I met Rihanna once in Vegas. I am so lucky to have had you in my (after)life, and so lucky to have found you again in this timeline even if I didn't know we went way back. Now I know who you are and what we mean to each other, what you mean to me. I don't say this to a lot of people, but I'll say it to you: I love you, girlfriend.  

 

By the time Tahani's eyes reached the last line, they were clouded by tears. She let them fall freely, tired of years of repressed feelings, moved by the words of a woman she would have never befriended under normal circumstances but that, in the end, turned out to be the sister she wished Kamilah had been. Because, again, the circumstances were anything but normal, and she herself was no longer the insecure, narcissistic monster she'd been the first time around.

 

She was about to write back to Eleanor ( _Let Jason sleep undisturbed by the weight of his life choices a little longer_ ) when her phone began to ring, the face she most wanted to see in the world filling up the entire screen.

 

It was him.

 

She accepted the incoming call, hands shaking uncontrollably as she brought the phone up to her ear. She realized then that she had never fully grasped just how much can go through a person's mind in a millisecond, how much can be felt within the human body in such a small fraction of time. She had so much to tell him, and yet she did not know what to say. So she just waited -- voice caught up in her throat, eyes closed, nothing in her heart but longing. For him, for every day spent together in hell, for every night they slept through in each other's arms, and even for all the mornings she woke up to an empty left side of the bed and hugged the pillow wishing she was hugging him. She longed for _them_ , for everything they had been, for everything they would never get the chance to be, and for the path not taken, the words unsaid, the unreachable and the undiscovered.

 

The world stopped on its axis when he finally said two words she'd heard hundreds of times, in many different situations -- and yet she could now recall every single one of them, and yet her heart still skipped a beat and her stomach filled with butterflies as if she was hearing them anew.

 

“Hey, princess.”

 

"Hello, darling." There was a pause, and then a sigh -- she could not tell if it came from him or from herself. God, what wouldn't she give to be granted an eternity with him. "I was about to call you."

 

"I couldn't sleep. I checked my phone to see if you were online and saw the email."

 

How many times had he done that? How many times had he reached out to her when tormented by insomnia or agitated by nightmares? He'd always had serious sleeping problems, and even night terrors sometimes, so they'd spend countless nights laying in the dark, snuggled like two little spoons, her fingers going through his hair or her hand holding his until his breathing evened out and he succumbed to exhaustion. And then it would always escalate from there and they would end up acting on their mutual attraction. In most versions of themselves in hell, their history of bed-sharing began long before their sexual encounters did. Because one of multiple patterns they often repeated was 'friends first until figuring out there were better off as lovers.'

 

It seemed like yesterday that she'd softly half-hummed, half-whispered some of her favourite songs in his ear to help him relax. The first time he _ever_ proposed to her, a couple of weeks into Attempt #7, she'd been lulling him to sleep with Coldplay's "Death And All His Friends". _All winter we got carried away / over on the rooftops, let's get married._ How bittersweetly fitting.

 

“How much do you remember?” Did it work the same way for everyone? Had he regained all the knowledge of Michael's failed attempts immediately after reading the email?

 

“I remember everything. You?”

 

She sighed in relief, “Me too.”

 

“What are we going to do, doll?”

 

“Do you have your passport?” She remembered he'd mentioned going on a trip to Mexico with his friend Pillboi a few months ago.

 

“I do."

 

Tahani's fingers flew over her laptop's keyboard. In a matter of seconds, she found what she was looking for.

 

“There's a direct flight to London leaving from Jacksonville in five hours. If I book it, do you think you can make it? You'd be here in less than twenty four hours."

 

The real question was, did he want to? Was he willing to get on a plane, sit through a 10 hour flight, travel all the way to the other side of the globe just to see her one last time? Would he think it was worth it? Would he think _she_ was worth it?

 

"I know it's selfish of me to ask," the faster she talked, the harder it was holding back tears, "but fuck it if I'll stop being selfish now after getting sent to hell almost a thousand times. I want to see you. I need to see you. Just one last time, please.”

 

"You know that I'd do anything to be with you, like that time I stole the train so we could escape together to Mindy St. Claire's house. Some of the best sex we ever had, if you ask me. Do you think she's kept the tape?"

 

She couldn't help but laugh. That was the wonderful thing about Jason, the easiness with which he made her smile even on the worst situations, how he always found joy in spite of his entire world falling apart around him. She had said this to him once (Attempt #512), and his reply had completely undone her: "You're my entire world, so I'm OK as long as you're not falling apart."

 

They stayed on the phone while she booked the flight and he threw some clothes into a Jaguars rucksack. They stayed on the phone while he drove to the airport, and she curled up on the couch and they talked about _their_ New York, the version of the city they'd lived in the first time back on Earth. And they talked about the little details, those things most people don't notice because they're almost subliminal, whereas they had had all the time in the world -- all the time in 805 versions of the world -- to learn and commit them to memory. The call went on for hours -- interrupted once or twice when he went through airport security -- and only ended right before he had to board the plane.

 

“Listen, in case something happens and I don't make it…”

 

“No, don't…”

 

This wasn't supposed to be goodbye. She knew they did not have all the time in the world now, knew that they would be torn apart from each other sooner rather than later, but not _now_. That plane would land in Heathrow in ten hours with Jason still on it, safe and sound, and she would be waiting for him. And then whenever goodbye was supposed to come, they would face it _together_.

 

She refused to accept there was a possibility that their love story could end like this. Jason, however, was being the pessimistic one for a change.

 

“Tahani, listen..." He was talking really fast, afraid that they would instruct him to turn off his phone any minute now. "If they reboot us or come for us or send us to that place with the human-eating pancakes…”

 

She cut him off.

 

"We are not doing this over the phone. Whatever you want to say to me, you can say it to me once you get here. Michael said we still had time." She took a deep breath, tried not to break down and cry. She did not want him to listen to her come apart, but she was on the edge of hysteria now, begging him to believe this was not it, it was not over yet. "Jason, _we still have time_. Please.”

 

Wiping the tears from her eyes, she tried to focus on things she could do before Jason's arrival. She opened up the Reddit app and replied to Eleanor's message, hoping that she would get the chance to read it when her plane landed on Sydney. Whatever walls remained around her heart came crumbling down as she typed the words.

 

**flowersinmyhead**

My dear Eleanor, I couldn't have wished for a better friend than you. Not in a million years. I love you and I always will, and I too have become a better person thanks to you and the effect our friendship has had on me. I will never be able to thank you for every moment we've spent together in those 803 reboots -- even if you always hated and annoyed me in the beginning. I'm glad to know Chidi and you will be together these final days before whatever will happen to us happens to us. Jason is coming to London to be with me, too. If they are our respective soulmates, which I genuinely believe is true, then you and I are each other's hearts. I love you.

 

Her sobbing was uncontrollable by the time she hit 'sent', but she wasn't crying out of anguish or fear. If anything, she was thankful she'd had the opportunity to experience real friendship and genuine love not only once but thousands of times. Some people go through their entire lives without getting that change -- in fact, she had been one of those people up until she died and went to Michael's complex idea of hell (if one thought about it, it certainly rivaled Dante's _Inferno_. At least it was as intricate and as original, if not perhaps more so.)

 

The next ten hours were a reminder of what literal hell was, a taste of what was probably to come in a few days again and last forever this time. The anxiety was worse than anything else she ever went through. She was not afraid of eternal punishment -- she just wanted Jason to get there in one piece as soon as possible, and the more she wished he were there in her arms the slower minutes seemed to tick by.

 

There was a voice in the back of her head whispering every single thing that could go wrong. Tahani tried to distract herself, tried to silence those thoughts with music. She re-made some of the playlists Jason used to surprise her with when they were together in what she now thought of as 'the New York timeline' -- she knew them all by heart, could have recited each title from the first to the last in her sleep without missing a beat. Mark Hoppus' voice begging _Quick crying your eyes out, baby come on / Isn't there something familiar about me / The past is only the future with the lights on_ had a whole different meaning now that she knew Jason was her soulmate. She listened again to all the songs that had been making _her_ cry and realized that the whole playlist fit them, all those songs about loss and sorrow, inexplicable longing, class clowns and beauty queens in tears.

 

Eleanor got online and replied to her message during her one-hour layover.

 

**theoutsider**

You never heard this from me, and if you ever breathe one word about this I will deny it all and find you in whatever corner of hell they put you in and I'll torture you myself, but your message made me cry. Damn you, you gorgeous giraffe with award-winning legs. I love you.

 

By the time Jason's plane landed in Heathrow, she was already waiting for him, heart beating out of control in her chest, flats on her feet (he liked the almost imperceptible height difference) and wearing her favourite flowery sundress, the same one she'd chosen to marry him in the other timeline -- she knew how much he loved her in it.

 

The minute she saw him walking towards her, looking exhausted and perhaps a little bit confused, she forgot how to breathe, how to think, how to _be_ . It knocked the wind out of her. Because he was real, and he was there, and he was _hers_ , gorgeous, shiny black eyes and adorable smile. The football t-shirt he was wearing, the one Tahani grabbed onto when she jumped into his arms, was the same piece of clothing she'd slept in countless of nights when they were married on Earth because she missed him when he had to go out of town for a few days with his dancing troupe. And at the same time it was not, because this was a different version of themselves, and they had never seen each other before, and she had never worn _that_ t-shirt. And oh fuck it all, he was finally there and she wouldn't waste any time overthinking this.

 

The collision was frantic and passionate, desperate and inevitable. It was the first time they were touching each other with these bodies, with these particular set of atoms arranged in this particular way, and yet his lips and skin tasted and felt so familiar. He wanted to get lost in her, she wished their love would devour them both and save them from the ground opening at their feet and swallowing them down. He cupped her face in his warm hands and she held him impossibly closer, and they shared their last first kiss for the eight hundred and fourth time. This, this was the moment those dreams had been leading them to. This was the reason every second in hell was worth it -- the way they easily melted into each other, two halves of a whole coming together. And when she buried her face in the crook of his neck she instinctively knew she was home _again_. Forever. For better, for worse. But _home_.

 

As it usually happens in big airports in big cities, they were ignored by everyone around them. People walked hurriedly past them, paying little attention to the young couple's reunion. If only they could imagine who they were and what they'd been through, the secrets they possessed and the horrors they had experienced, the side of the universe and its reward and punishment machine they had seen up-close. Ignorance _really_ was bliss.

 

Tahani pressed her forehead to Jason’s, eyes closed and tears streaming down her face. He kissed her cheeks, her eyelids, everywhere his lips could reach, as she whispered, “It's you! It really is you! I can't believe it's you!” over and over. Because in the course of the last ten hours, sometimes she thought no one would show up at Heathrow. She thought perhaps she'd made him up, that maybe the statue of her sister _had_ hit her and she was hallucinating, brain-damaged in a hospital somewhere in the United States, dreaming of the love she'd always competed for and never got. But he was there, _real and hers_ , and now that they were touching and kissing and he was holding onto her for dear life it seemed ridiculous to have ever doubted _this_. It was too strong, too powerful to be conjured up by the human mind. She should have known hours ago, she couldn't have imagined love.  

 

He looked into her eyes, those two beautiful pools of the deepest, richest brown sparkling with tiny golden freckles. They reminded him of chocolate and warm fall afternoons and falling asleep spooning her from behind. And her laughter, the way those eyes lit up when she smiled, it reminded him of bringing her flowers just to hear her laugh, it reminded him of those Saturday mornings he spent teaching her how to drive on the right side of the road because for some reason people in her country got it all mixed up and all their cars were built wrong (how hadn't anyone noticed?) She tasted of everything that was nice and sweet, like strawberries and mini waffles and the Jaguars winning the Super Bowl. She smelled of freshly cut grass and jasmine flowers and beach days in the summer eating sun-warmed peaches. She was more powerful, more addictive than any drug he'd ever experimented with. And he couldn't get enough.

 

"You're so pretty," He always made a point of telling her how special he thought she was. He wished he was better with words, wished he could write poetry like those dead guys she read. But he was no poet, so simple expressions had to make do. Like when he tried to explain to her once what it felt like to caress her when they made love ("Your skin is so soft and smooth, like a bunch of water balloons.") And yet she wanted him. She could have had more intelligent men. Richer men, oh there was no doubt about that -- he didn't have a penny to his name. She could have been with artists and intellectuals and scientists. But she chose the underdog from Jacksonville, Florida, the guy in the sports clothes that told her she's pretty a thousand times a day because he did not know how else to let her know she was the light of his life.

 

"Just pretty?"

 

"Pretty beautiful," he pulled her close and kissed her hard, sucked the air out of her lungs. “You're even more beautiful than they made me remember."

 

“So are you." Her memories had not made the flesh and blood justice. God, he was gorgeous. “You have lovely freckles."

 

“You have lovely everything,”

 

“I booked us a room in the Marriott in County Hall," Tahani said, blushing furiously even though she had been _married_ to this bloke in over seven hundred different realities and they'd 'pounded it out' -- as he so delicately put it -- thousands of times. "I hope it's alright--”

 

He cut her off. “I'd go anywhere with you.”

 

They both knew it was true. They had been to hell together and they would both go back there in a heartbeat if it meant spending eternity in each other's warm embrace. It wasn't going to happen, though. No one had said it out loud yet, but they just knew it was impossible. No place they sent them to would be hell if they had their love to hold onto. If the Judge had ruled against them, then chances were these were their last moments before being forever torn apart. Michael had said as much in his email. They were granted one last goodbye -- not many people could say that. Maybe all in all, they really were lucky.

 

She rested her head on his shoulder during the cab ride to the hotel. He pressed his face to the window and contemplated _her_ London, mesmerised, in love with the city she had told him so much about, the city she knew like the back of her hand. The cabbie thought  they were one of those couples with a long distance relationship. He didn't mind the snogging and the sighs and the whispering nonsense in between eskimo kisses. They were a couple of kids, they couldn't be a day past thirty. He wished them luck when they got off. He had no idea how much they needed it.  

 

Tahani had booked the most expensive suite overlooking Westminster she'd been able to find on such short notice. When they’d been in the Fake Good Place, she'd always told Jason she wished she could have shown him London. Then, on Earth, they'd always said they would go there to celebrate their first year anniversary. One night in the city, a couple if they were lucky, was far from what they had imagined, but they'd long ago lost the privilege to care whether things went according to their plans or not. Now they understood how frail it was, the illusion of free will. Even this encounter depended on favours pulled by an all-powerful mystical being, and it could be cut short any minute now. They better make the most of their borrowed time.

 

The rest of the world was shut out the moment the door closed behind them. Tahani could have sworn he was able to hear her heart, hammering against her ribcage as loudly as his. He kissed her softly, almost as if scared to break the spell they were under, and then she took him by the hand and guided him to the enormous bathroom, where there was a warm bath waiting for them.

 

He unzipped her dress and took her underwear off carefully (he knew her clothes were expensive and that she took pride in them.) She undressed him slowly because she didn't know when she'd have the chance to do this next. Tahani saw her name tattooed on his chest, traced its barely perceptible contour with the tip of her fingers. He shuddered under her touch. She let him pull her closer and into the bathtub with him and got completely lost in his touch. The silence was deafening, only broken perhaps by the gentle brush of their skins against one another, a sigh here and there, his teeth grazing her collarbone or her nails scratching his neck.

 

They made it back to the bedroom eventually. He threw her on the bed, one hand cradling the back of her head so she wouldn't hurt herself when she hit the mattress. The weight of his body on top of hers was as warm and delicious as ever. The moment he was inside of her for the first time in this particular plane of their existence _but_ for the millionth time in the overall history of their immortal souls, Tahani wondered how she would be able to cope _not if but when_ they took him away from her again, erased him from her memory and replaced this bliss with sheer, inexplicable emptiness.

 

Because that's what they had coming, there was no denying. This was what it all was about, right? Michael's brilliant, groundbreaking idea of modern hell. He'd chosen two pairs of soulmates, his very own human zoo, used them to torture each other, because as it turned out Sartre was right, hell _is_ other people. Sometimes hell can be the person you love the most. Sometimes hell can be the systematic loss of the love of your life.

 

Her whole body tensed in anticipation. Jason stopped moving, the fingers of one hand tightly closed around her wrist to pin her down, his other hand lovingly drawing patterns on her thigh as he held her close to him, both of her legs wrapped around him to urge him deeper. He looked into her eyes and saw they were filling with tears. She looked right back into his, grabbed a handful of his black hair and brought his mouth down on hers, tried to kiss his worries away. He wasn't having any of it. He stilled and held her and asked what was wrong, and she died to say _nothing, everything_ , but in the end she simply narrowed it down to the only feeling that mattered, the only feeling that would matter from now on and for the rest of eternity, the one thing she would spend the rest of her journey through this universe wanting to say to him in each reunion, lest the higher beings allow it to happen.

 

She tilted her pelvis up invitingly, “I missed this.” It was true. She had been missing this even long before she regained all of her memories and knew exactly what _this_ was. "I missed _me_ when I'm with you."

 

“Me too.” His voice was hoarse. They held onto each other and kept quiet for a second, heartbeats synchronized, so wrapped up in each other it was impossible to tell where he ended, where she began. “I missed _you_ ,” Jason said.

 

“I missed you, too.”

 

The sex was passionate and intense at first, then desperate and tender. At one point he grabbed her hips and stopped her from moving mid-shag, asked if she was trying to fuck him into the mattress and break the bed in the process. (It had happened to them on more than one occasion, on several different attempts. Coming up with excuses to request a new bed from Janet was always awkward. One time when they figured out Michael was torturing them and that he was probably going to reboot them when they confronted him, Tahani was silently relieved she wouldn't have to tell Janet the legs of her bed had 'spontaneously' given out that morning… again.) It was playful and sweet, and there were moments where it felt they were rediscovering the taste and feeling of one another, finding things they'd never noticed before and reacquainting themselves with the one person they knew so well they had been dreaming about them and craving them. And then there were moments where they both completely let go and stopped thinking altogether, no comparison to other bodies they'd inhabited in other versions they'd made love, and so they simply accepted the here and now, these bodies and this version, and acted as if it _really_ was their very first time, all the while fighting the voices in their heads screaming at them that it was also their very last.

 

They lay in the darkness afterwards, her back to his chest and his hand holding hers, his face buried where her neck and shoulder met, heads sharing the same pillow and the same thoughts. Tahani was the first one to give voice to a question Jason didn't dare ask because he wasn't sure he'd like the answer.

 

“How much time do you think we have left before the Judge comes?”

 

It had been almost thirty hours since 'the email'. At the time he sent it, Michael had been unable to tell _when_ whatever was going to happen to them would be happening to them.

 

“I don't know." Jason laced his fingers with hers. "Not a lot, I guess.” He sounded sad. Defeated. His voice was soft as always but there was something different in it, as if he were fighting back tears (Tahani knew _she_ was.)

 

“Do you think we'll find each other again? Wherever they take us next." It was probably the last thing he wanted to talk about. They should be fucking each other senseless, should be pretending they were not doomed from the start. She had chosen love over fear, hadn't she? So why was she letting all these dark thoughts take control?

 

“I hope we do." He sighed. It wasn't hard to tell he was _anything_ but hopeful. "I'll try. I promise.”

 

“We probably won't remember each other." Hopelessness was contagious, it seemed.

 

Jason sat up and looked down at her, unable or unwilling to believe that she didn't have faith after all they'd been through together.

 

“A part of us will remember," he insisted. It was Tahani's turn to sit up now. She pressed her forehead to his, tried to find the rights word to say. But she was speechless. Because what they don't tell you is that choosing love over fear does not always come with the wisdom that is necessary to face those things we are choosing not to be afraid of. "We remembered this time. We found each other this time."

 

"Jason…"

 

He wouldn't listen to her. He was in denial. He _did_ know what they had coming their way, but he was determined to believe they could escape fate whatever the price to pay, that this was not their last chance.

 

"Why can't it happen again?" he asked, desperate. "And then again and again and again until they give up?”

 

But Tahani knew better. Michael had not once given up, not after over eight hundred failed attempts at tormenting them. _They_ had worn him out in the end, and then after agreeing to attend Chidi's classes he had become a better being, he had understood human nature and come to love them. But before that happened, he had been willing to do whatever it took for his work to be successful. She was sure other demons were the same -- even worse, perhaps. There would be no changing them for the better, there would be no convincing Sean or Trevor or anyone else from the Bad Place. They had been lucky to have Janet and Michael as allies, but they were the exception, not the rule, and there was only so much they could do to help. Michael's email really made it sound like they were running around in circles and out of options. And even if he and Janet kept fighting, the other side would fight back.

 

“I don't think they'll give up easily…” Tahani admitted with a sigh.

 

“Then we'll keep on finding each other.”

 

She couldn't bear it, how blinded he was by his own hopelessness. He knew very well those were lies he was telling himself and her to cope with the fact that this was probably _it._ Tahani sat on the edge of the bed, her back to him, her eyes filling up with tears fast.

 

“And they'll keep forcing us away from each other. It's a vicious, tortuous circle. No end, no beginning…" She was speaking through gritted teeth, making a tremendous effort not to break down and cry. The knot in her throat was so tight she thought she was going to be sick. "They've done this to us over eight hundred times, what makes you believe they'll ever stop?”

 

It was not a rhetorical question. She _did_ want to know what made him believe they stood a chance. What made him be so sure they would beat the odds when a minute ago he had been hopeless. Maybe that's the secret behind faith -- maybe faith is only possible where there is no place left for hope.

 

“They won't stop. But neither will we. I'll find you again. Or you'll find me. We've done it before. We can do it again.”

 

She turned around and faced him.

 

“If we don't…”

 

“We will.”

 

 _Oh, darling, you just can't know that._ Tahani kept talking as if he had not interrupted her. “If we don't, I want you to know that something within me will always love you." The words were coming out of her mouth unfiltered and uncensored. The things she had not let him say on the phone before, maybe it was time to say them now. "Even if they kill us and revive us and reboot us over a million times, something will always survive. Some part of me will always keep the memories of our time together." She reached for his hand, he pulled her so close their noses were touching and she could count his lovely freckles, and he could see just how impossibly perfect her eyelashes were. "They will never be able to erase the memory that I was yours and you were mine. We are soulmates," Tahani reminded him, one hand on his chest so she could feel the beat of his heart. "Soulmates never die.”

 

He held onto those words, onto the idea that if they were soulmates -- and _they were,_ he knew they were -- then they would never forget each other. And if they remembered, it meant they could find each other again. Start over somewhere else, somewhere new. Maybe next time, or the next, they’d be able to escape.

 

“Tell me all the things you want to do," he asked her, desperate to keep her talking, thinking that if they got lost in their own handmade heaven then they would never be found and sent to hell.

 

“If they don't reboot us?”

 

“Or next time we find each other if they do.”

 

There was no harm in pretending, right? She'd indulge him, she'd indulge them both, make plans as if they had free will, as if she was not as hopeless now as she had been fearless before. She'd tell him what was on her mind, and on her heart, because she couldn't stand him doubting whether she'd make the same choices where it came to him, whether she'd do anything differently if given the option.

 

She wouldn't.

 

Tahani lay back on the bed and he lay right beside her. She closed her eyes, breathed him in, and when he took her in his arms and held her close to him she began talking. She focused on the sound of his heartbeat, the proof that they were alive, and real, and each other's. They loved each other, and _no one_ could take that away from them.

 

“I want to do it all over again," she sighed. "Meeting you, falling in love with you, marrying you three months into our relationship. I want you to talk me into watching your favourite movies and trying your favourite foods." Once she started, it was easy to keep going. "I want you to beat me at Scrabble with words you think you're making up but actually exist. I want us to play our own version of cricket striking the ball at a dozen champagne flutes instead of the wicket." She fought back tears, the memories of that day so bittersweetly painful she felt a knot in her stomach, as if she was back on that beach in a wedding dress being told the man she loved more than anything technically belonged to someone else. "I want the snogging and the cuddling and the fighting over silly things. I want your Jacksonville stories and your old Jaguars t-shirts to sleep in." She opened up her eyes, turned on her side and looked at him. "I want _you_ , all eight hundred and five versions of you -- even the ones that didn't want me back.”

 

It was true. She had loved him from the very beginning, from the moment Michael introduced them during Attempt #1 and said _This is your soulmate, Jianyu._ She'd loved the idea of him at first, the concept of someone being the half that would fill her inner void and make her feel complete _at last_ , someone who would adore her and worship her and look at her as if she was the reason the sun came up in the mornings. Her soulmate was, after all, the person she was meant to be with. Tahani's infatuation with Jianyu had been a given in all of the versions. Michael had counted on that for his plan to work.

 

Heartbreak had always followed, of course, the reasons behind it too varied, too many -- he was not who he was saying, he was a liar, he took her for a fool, he didn't trust her enough to share his secrets with her, and on occasion he loved another woman (for lack of a better term to describe Janet.) And yet after getting over her heart being shattered, Tahani always fell for Jason, the bloke that liked football and junk food too much and knew nothing about literature or art and watched movies that were too confusing and too loud. She always saw through all that and fell in love with him, the real person behind the silent monk façade. She always saw the kind man with the boyish smile that could make her laugh, and who taught her to be nicer to herself, the one that understood she wanted to be held when she got scared, the one that kissed her good morning and good night and asked how she felt when something upset her and made her see there was more to life than appearances.

 

It was as if they had programmed it into her DNA -- she didn't know how not to love him. She didn't think she wanted to find out what it was like not to love him. Tahani hoped he understood that, that she wouldn't change a minute of it in exchange for heaven, or a less complicated love story, or peace of mind.

 

A moment of silence followed Tahani's little speech. And then he proposed they did the only thing he thought made sense under the circumstances: “Run away with me.”

 

“Jason…”

 

“Let's get out of here before they come,” he insisted.

 

“They'll find us anyway, no matter where we go. I'm surprised they haven't come for us yet…”

 

“Maybe Michael finally stopped them…"

 

Tahani ran a hand through his messy, dark hair. “Darling, I don't think so.”

 

“Let's do it anyway.”

 

“Michael said all we got was a couple of days, _at best_ …"

 

He jumped up off the bed and put his boxers back on, deeply angry and upset all of a sudden, unable to keep on lying there with her doing nothing, just waiting. Unable to accept their fate was sealed. She got up too, started to put on her underwear, feeling cold now that they were not skin to skin and he seemed to be much more further away than a couple of feet. He was getting dressed. Was he leaving? Panic rose inside her and settled like a heavy weight in the pit of her stomach. She slipped back into her clothes too. She wished she could say _Yes, let's get married on a whim and tell nobody, you look good in that football t-shirt, I'm still wearing last night's dress._ But it was impossible. It was crazy.

 

"Jason, please…"

 

“Do you think Eleanor and Chidi are just gonna take this lying down? No, they won't! Then why should we?”

 

“Then what do you suggest? What options have we got?" She threw her hands up in defeat. She could see how upset he was, understood his pain because she was feeling it too -- as devastatingly, as intensely. "There's nowhere for us to hide, Jason!" Tahani grabbed him by the arm and made him look at her, pleading eyes and broken heart exposed for him to see. "We've died and gone to hell over and over again, eight hundred and three times, and then got sent back to Earth twice, and there has not been one second of it where they weren't torturing us!”

 

“And we always figured out what they were doing! What makes you think we can't outsmart them once more?”

 

How could he not see that she was right and he was wrong and that they were wasting their precious time fighting over a war that was already finished, a war they had already lost?

 

“We've never outsmarted them! Darling, don't you get it?" A bitter laugh escaped her. "There is no outsmarting an all-knowing, all-powerful being!”

 

“I found you that night in Cleveland,” he reminded her.

 

“Because _they_ let it happen!”

 

“You found Eleanor on Reddit." He wasn't going to let this go, was he? "And Eleanor read my post, and she sent it to you, and we found each other again. And before that, I had found Chidi. _They_ had nothing to do with that. That was _us_. Maybe all of us have to work together to prevent a great evil--”

 

She laughed again. This time it was real and sincere. Fuck, she loved this chap and whatever nonsense came out of his mouth, no matter how improbable, how bollocks it sounded. “Jason, that's the plot of _The OA.”_

 

“Well, I don't know what to believe in anymore! I just don't wanna stay here with my arms crossed and wait for them to tear us apart again!

 

It was destroying her, seeing him like this. It destroyed her that there wasn't anything she could do to protect him, make this better, escape the inevitable. So she did the only thing that came to mind that could do them good -- she threw herself at him and hugged him, arms around his neck and face buried in his chest. At first he didn't move, too upset over Tahani accepting they were doomed and refusing to go down with him kicking and screaming, but eventually he succumbed to his need for her touch and warmth, and so he held onto her too. His one true love, his destiny, the only real thing he had ever had to call his own. The one person worth fighting for.

 

"And we _did_ outsmart them, you know?" he whispered in her ear, a knot in his throat, tears streaming down his face. "They thought they'd sent us to hell, but we fell in love and I was your Heaven and you were mine.”

 

She took a step back so she could wipe his tears away with her thumb, all the while without breaking their embrace. “You make hell sound so poetic. And with you, it was nothing but.”

 

“I'd go through it again if it means I get to be with you. I'd choose you over the Real Good Place anytime. Because you are my good place."

 

“So are you.”

 

An hour later they were sitting on the floor, still fully dressed, Tahani's legs draped over his lap, their ring fingers intertwined in what might have been an unconscious promise, something to make up for the fact that they had not been able to act like two crazy kids in love and get married overnight this time.

 

“Jason?”

 

“Mmmh?”

 

“Where would you like us to go if we could actually run away?”

 

He shrugged in a way that meant _I don't know, I only care if you come with me._ “Where would _you_ like to go?” he asked her.

 

“Anywhere. I don't mind as long as they let me keep you. I'd live in a hole in the ground with you. Wherever we are it feels like home.”

 

He kissed her forehead, her eyelashes, her nose, anywhere he could reach. Oh how she wished they let her keep him, if only for a little bit longer. If only for one more night. But they were coming for them, she could feel it on her bones, her marrow, very deep inside her. They had run out of time. They were almost there.

 

It was almost over.

 

Perhaps, if they were lucky, it was about to begin again.

 

“Tahani?”

 

How she loved the sound of her name when it was him whispering it in her ear.

 

“Mmmh?”

 

“Can we make a promise? If we're torn apart, neither of us lets go. Can we promise each other that? Please?”

 

She would have given him the world if she had been able to. She would have given him anything he asked for, if only it had been possible. If only they had not been doomed from the start. But she could give Jason this, she could make this promise. She _would_ make this promise. Tahani knew what it meant, what he was really asking of her -- _We won't forget each other, we'll try to find our way back, our love will survive. This doesn't have to end here, this isn't forever. Don't give up on me because I won't give up on you._

 

Tahani laced her fingers with his, brought his hand up to her mouth and kissed his knuckles one by one.

 

“I promise if we're torn apart then I won't let go.”

 

He leaned down to capture her lips in his, and that's when they heard it. Someone was knocking on the suite's door. The sound startled them. Before they could do or say something, before they could even attempt to move, the Judge's voice reached their ears, slightly muffled. She was standing right outside. She had finally come to get them.

 

“I hate to shoot down your glass balloons, but I must speak with you to tell you about the fate of your souls. Meet me in 15 minutes at The Library at County Hall -- I always wanted to have afternoon English tea in London."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The writing of this chapter took me longer than a month, and I have enjoyed every second of it. Marina's music and the planning of this story are helping me through one of the most stressful times in my life. So is my wonderful best friend, who also read this chapter first and discussed with me both what happens in it and what is about to come in future chapters -- as always, having her in my life improves me both as a writer and as a person, and I couldn't be more thankful for that. 
> 
> I'm also thankful for every single person out there reading this. Chapter XI will be up soon.


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